Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 6 Mar 1968

Vol. 64 No. 11

Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Bill, 1968 (Certified Money Bill): Committee and Final Stages.

Section 1 agreed to.

SECTION 2.

Question proposed: "That section 2 stand part of the Bill".

Mr. O'Quigley

I suppose it is correct to say, and I am sure the House will readily agree, that there is nothing more complicated to draft and few things more difficult to understand than the statutory provisions with regard to superannuation. We had here on the last occasion Senator Ó Maoláin explaining to us with admirable clarity the provisions of an amending scheme to the Deputies pension scheme. We all understood, of course, the difficulty of understanding, interpreting and putting in clear language what was intended.

The new regulations which will be made under this section or which will be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas under this section are, as laid down, as complicated, as rigmarole and as badly drafted as the regulations we have laid before us in many other cases up to the present time. Therefore, I should like to ask the Minister, in relation to all Statutory Instruments that will be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas under this section, whether there will be a comprehensive explanatory memorandum submitted which should accompany it in the same way as an explanatory memorandum would accompany a Bill. I claim, as a result of the recommendations of the Statutory Instruments Committee some years ago, that we have an explanatory memorandum at the foot of every Statutory Instrument but I want to go much further than that.

I want not merely the general effect of the Statutory Instruments to be specified in this memorandum but some details as to what the different articles of the Statutory Instruments mean. If Deputies and Senators are to study those things with any effect they must have an explanatory memorandum. Now, when one goes to most Statutory Instruments that are made under this particular code of pensions, of which there are in all 15 or 16 I understand, and when you also consider the fact that there is nothing equivalent to the index to the statutes available for Statutory Instruments showing what articles have been amended and in what way it becomes absolutely essential if the Members of the Oireachtas are not to be mere cyphers that they should be given an explanatory memorandum setting out what is contained in the instruments to be laid under this section. I would ask the Minister to undertake to the House that this will be done so as to make a reality of the procedure of laying those before the Houses of the Oireachtas and in that way enabling Members of the Oireachtas to make an intelligent assessment of what is contained in those instruments which at the present time it is impossible for them to do.

Minister for Defence (Mr. Hilliard)

It is the usual practice to circulate an explanatory memorandum setting out the details of pensions schemes and amendments thereto and I propose to continue that practice. When any scheme envisaged in this section is being laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas an explanatory memorandum will be issued.

Question put and agreed to.

Section 3 agreed to.

SECTION 4.

Mr. O'Quigley

I move recommendation No. 1:

Before section 4 to insert a new section as follows:

"This Act shall come into force on a day to be fixed by the Minister, such day to be not earlier than the seventh day following the laying before each House of the Oireachtas of a copy of the consolidated version of the Defence Forces (Pensions) Scheme."

On Second Stage Senator Dooge raised the point with regard to the condition in which the Statutory Instruments are at the present time. There are, as I say, something of the order of 15 or 16 such instruments dealing with pensions under this particular Act, the Act of 1932 and its amending Acts. In 1958 the Statutory Instruments Committee made a recommendation to the Department of Defence and the Minister for Defence that those instruments be codified into one instruments. I do not know to what extent that work has progressed but it certainly was the view of the Statutory Instruments Committee that that work should be undertaken and completed. I remember being on that Committee myself at that time. They were people who had waded through hundreds of statutory instruments every year and they knew exactly the difficulty in interpreting and following what was contained in a variety of statutory instruments. This was particularly difficult in regard to the statutory instruments relating to pensions of the Defence Forces

In modern times it has become necessary to give power to Ministers to make regulations but the stage has now been reached, and we better face up to it, that for most regulations, whether they are under the Social Welfare code, the Defence Forces code or any other code, where it is quite impossible to know at any time what the law is. If one wants to find out what the law is in relation to an Act of Parliament one can find that in the statutes and one is aided in tracing it in various amendments that have been made by looking up the index to the statutes published periodically and the index published at the end of every year to the statutes passed in any particular year. There is no similar facility available to anybody to try to trace what amendments have been made by one statutory instruments to another.

It is quite obvious that when you have a specific recommendation made by a Statutory Instruments Committee established by this House those regulations should be codified it should be done in view of the fact that in this Bill we are now giving authority to the Minister to make regulations and lay them before the Houses of the Oireachtas. The purpose of this amendment is to force the Minister, I franckly admit, and his Department, into codifying this complex and scattered body of regulations and to provide that this Act will not come into force until a date to be fixed by the Minister, which will not be earlier than the seventh day following the laying before each House of the Oireachtas of the codified regulations.

I consider that is an eminently sensible thing. It should not be necessary at all in the ordinary course of events to provide for this because the administrators would have enough sense to see to it that the statutory instruments would be clearly available to the public at all times and not available only to officers and servants of the Minister. When that has not been done after a specific recommendation of the Statutory Instruments Committee, I am inviting the House now to see that they endorse what the Statutory Instruments Committee did in 1958. They can do that most effectively by accepting this amendment.

Mr. Cole

I should like to support a good deal of what Senator O'Quigley has said. I am not quite sure I will go as far as laying this before the Houses of the Oireachtas in order to force the hands of the Minister although I know there has been very great difficulty in finding out in the Department of Defence what exactly the position is in regard to this matter. You find the amendment to an amendment of an amendment. It is very difficult and very troublesome to discover what the position is. On the position generally, I think there should be some recommendation whereby a statutory instrument could not be amended more often than so many times and then it must be reprinted with the new amendments and brought up to date even though you might find that in many of these army regulations it is on amendments of substituting a figure of two-thirds or three-thirds or something like that. It is sometimes a very slight amendment but it seems to me that by reprinting the whole thing after a certain length of time the Departments would facilitate their own staff as well as facilitating members of the Bar and Members of this House.

Mr. O'Quigley

And members of the Defence Forces particularly.

Mr. Cole

The Defence Forces must want to know what the wording of the Departments is to secure these regulations and find out the conditions. That is what appeared to us the previous time this came before the Statutory Instruments Committee. Whereas we understood a great deal had been done there had been nothing near completion on discussion of the matter. I would not go so far as to delay the regulations under the Bill for this purpose but otherwise I have full sympathy with what Senator O'Quigley has said.

Mr. Hilliard

I sympathise very much with the idea underlying the proposal contained in this recommendation because it would be a great convenience for everyone including me as Minister, the Department and the Army to have a consolidated pension scheme. Actually, a considerable amount of work, preparatory work, was done but the difficulty is that in order to finalise a consolidated measure it is desirable to have what can be described as a valley period— that is a period free from current amendments and in point of fact we have had no such experience.

Senator O'Quigley, speaking on section 2, admitted that the preparation of pension schemes is a very complex business, a very difficult business to undertake. So also is a consolidation measure as Senator O'Quigley knows very well. There has been no time in recent years at which amendments to the pension schemes have not been on the stocks as a result of pay increases and budgetary increases.

These are factors which prevented the Department from pursuing the matter of condification to finality. There is also the point that in a number of respects simple consolidation would not be satisfactory. There are things which could well be changed, provisions which we should like to improve, and so on. Even if the codification were done it would not mean an end to amendments to pension schemes.

Mr. O'Quigley

We should hope so.

Mr. Hilliard

As I said on the Second Reading this Bill has been prepared in order to save the time of both Houses of the Oireachtas. Under the present system requiring confirmation of amending schemes by resolution of each House retired members of the Forces have to wait some time for benefits to which they are entitled. At present there are ex-members who are waiting increases based on the tenth round pay increase which took place in 1966. Once this Bill becomes law amending schemes can be made quickly and in the future there need be no great delay since increases would be automatic. I would, therefore, ask the House to give me this Bill.

Mr. O'Quigley

The Minister for Defence has, of course, put up the best defence possible for himself and his Department and he has done it in a manly way but I am quite sure that the Minister is not at all happy with the defence he put up. He was given very few weapons to fight off the charges levelled against him and his Department.

This, of course, is the usual kind of excuse and answer that one always gets from a Government Department when they have not done their job. The Statutory Instruments Committee which sits here regularly—and I know the work they do because they are conscious of the frightful mess into which a variety of codes and regulactions get—made this regulation. I remember correspondence with the Department of Defence on this matter and then they made this very gentlemanly courteous recommendation in the last part of their report. It is in the First Report of the Statutory Instruments Committee and it states:

In the case of instruments which have been subject to amendments over a period of years such as the Defence Forces (Pensions) Scheme, 1937, the Select Committee is of the opinion that there is a need for consolidation and it would be glad to see this work undertaken at a convenient opportunity.

This was a very nice polite way for the Members of the Oireachtas to tell the Department of Defence that they failed hopelessly to do their jobs. I recollect quite distinctly that the correspondence with the Department of Defence at that time did contain a promise somewhat like what the Minister gave now, that the work was under way and it was because we believed at that time that the work was under way that we made this gentlemanly recommendation to the Minister for Defence.

The present Minister is not to blame for this. They had another Minister since 1958. The grounds which the Minister gives of doing it now will always apply. I can never see stability in money values or, alternatively, whether a stage will be reached where there will be no improvement in pensions for the Defence Forces. I hope the latter will never arise and, therefore, we expect there will always be amendments to the statutory instruments. If it were not possible to do it in ten years from July 1958 to March 1968, is there any prospect whatever that these regulations will be amended for the next ten years? I do not see any change from 1968 to 1978 and I do not see that there is any real intention by the Minister or his Department to get down to the work which they can do in a matter of weeks.

I have here with me to use later this evening the whole difficult code of income tax law. I do not know how many enactments are involved in this. The difficulty about consolidated statutes is that you have to make recommendation in modern dress to old legislation. When it comes to consolidated regulations it is freer because not alone can you consolidate the regulations but you can amend them as you go along. If the Minister wants to incorporate amendments here or there, nobody will find fault with it because these regulations will revoke all the old ones and the new ones will come into effect when presented to the Oireachtas or, rather, when signed by the Minister. Neither is there any argument for not amending them, based on the proposition that amendments are necessary from time to time.

If I seek to find out tomorrow which regulations govern Army pensions, with all my experience I could not say with certainly "these are the regulation". There is no way of finding out. I would have to ring the Department. If any officer or soldier wanted to find out, he should be able to take a single book of regulations. That is the situation the amendment seeks to bring about —to force the hand of the Minister to codify the regulations in a way that will make them intelligible to people outside the Department. I am satisfied nobody outside the Department knows what is contained in the regulations, that nobody can say with any degree of certainty that such and such is what a particular person is entitled to.

I regret to say the Minister has pleaded a defence which can be pleaded again in 1978 if this matter arises. He has shown no indication of willingness to tackle the problem. I regret that the Minister has not faced up to the difficulty and given the House an undertaking that within a year or two years this work will be completed. The Minister should be in a position to do that. If he has the will it certainly can be done.

Mr. Murphy

I hope our Defence Forces are more efficient and up-to-date than the Department who administer their pensions. It should be stressed that the recommendation of the Statutory Instruments Committee is ten years old. I do not accept the Minister's defence—I do not think he believes it himself—that a valley period is needed to deal with this problem. The Department must know what is the up-to-date position. They must know in order to administer the pension. All that is required, therefore, is to bring the position into one up-to-date document.

A trade union might as well say, instead of looking for improvements in conditions, that it would bring the printed agreement up to date. We do not do that. We bring it up to date anyway and at the same time continue to get improvements for members as far as we can. We do not say we should wait during a valley period.

Mr. O'Quigley

A truce is what they want.

Mr. Murphy

It is plain silly. I have more respect for the Minister than to think he believes this himself. I was shocked, and I underlined it, when we were told during the last sitting that we are now dealing with pension improvements arising out of the 10th round which, as the Minister reminded us, occurred in 1966. Members of the forces have been waiting to get an increase in pension——

Mr. Hilliard

I told you last week that they were automatic increases.

Mr. Murphy

This is not the Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Bill, 1966 but the Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Bill, 1968. We have had to wait two years before a Bill dealing with adjustments in pensions arising out of the 10th round increases saw the light of day. This is fantastic. None of us wants to hold up the measures but even the silent Members condemn this situation and would like to have a firm assurance from the Minister that he will take a bayonet or gun or whatever is necessary to have this straightened out without delay.

Mr. Hilliard

The idea in introducing the Bill is to eliminate delay in the payment of automatic increases of the type specified in section 3 of the Bill. There are very few people who fully understand army pension schemes. The schemes involve instruments which are most difficult to frame and put into legal language. The same applies in other countries. It is not as simple as one would think to have these measures consolidated. There is a reason for the delay. I have assured the Seanad that I should like to see consolidation brought to finality and I will do everything I can to have that done. I do not wish to be bound to a period of time in which to complete the work. I have nothing further to say— there is nothing further I can say— beyond the assurance that I will do everything I possibly can.

Mr. O'Quigley

Of course, I have no intention of pressing the recommendation because the situation is already bad without making it worse. It was necessary to put down the recommendation to highlight two things —the neglect to carry out a recommendation of the Statutory Instruments Committee and the appalling delay and callous indifference of the Minister and the Department to frame regulations to give effect to increases which should have been applicable two years ago. These are increases which pensioners should have got two years ago.

Mr. Hilliard

Arising out of the £1 a week pay increase. Pensioners may not have finished their Army service two years ago. I do not know if there are many who have been waiting two years.

Mr. Murphy

Will they get interest?

Mr. O'Quigley

No, but if they were liable for income tax they would be paying interest on it. It is outrageous that this has continued and if the Bill will do anything to avoid that kind of delay it will do something good. However, I am satisfied nothing will be done about consolidating the Statutory Instruments until some new Minister gets in and gets a bayonet.

Mr. Hilliard

You are mistaken.

Mr. O'Quigley

I hope the Minister has sufficient steel in him to do it.

Recommendation, by leave, withdrawn.

Section 4 agreed to.

TITLE.

Question proposed: "That the Title be the Title to the Bill".

Mr. O'Quigley

I want to say again that I object vigorously and that I will continue to object to this piece of absurd nonsense of giving to a Bill a title like "Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Bill, 1968." If we wish to pass a Defence Forces Pensions Bill we should call it that. We all know that in cases like this one piece of legislation amends another. It is unnecessary, therefore, to have this sort of title typed across every document, written across every pay cheque. On this, might I draw your attention to the fact that section 4 of the Act says——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We can hardly go back to that now.

Mr. O'Quigley

Is there not a mistake in the Title? In the Bill, we call it "An Act to amend the Defence Forces (Pensions) Act, 1932" and, in the Title of the Bill, we call it "Defence Forces (Pensions) (Amendment) Bill, 1968."

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Long Title is before the House.

Mr. Hilliard

Under section 4(2) we read that the Defence Forces (Pensions) Acts, 1932 to 1957, and this Bill when enacted may be cited together as the "Defence Forces (Pensions) Acts, 1932 to 1968" and shall be construed together as one Act. The Title of the Bill accords with what was drafted by the Parliamentary draftsman.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill reported without recommendation.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.

Bill received for final consideration.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be returned to the Dáil".

Mr. O'Quigley

When will the new regulations to give effect to the 10th round increase be made?

Mr. Hilliard

They will be made as soon as possible.

Mr. O'Quigley

We shall be keeping an eye out for the Statutory Instruments when it is laid.

Question put and agreed to.