Before we finally agree to section 1, I should like to make the point I made on the Second Reading speech, that you have got to be a juggler to get hold of what is going on in this Bill. You have got to have in one hand 15 former Army Pensions Acts and another hand balancing 20 Defence Forces Acts. In section 1 we refer to Acts of 1923, 1927, 1932, 1937, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1953, the No. 2 Act of 1960—that was a particularly good year, there were two Acts—and the Act of 1968.
As a conscientious legislator I made some attempt to find out what was going on in this Bill. After half an hour or three-quarters you would give up in despair because you had turned over the pages of so many previous Acts that you ended up just throwing it all in. It would be much simpler if some sort of Schedule could be put at the end of a Bill of this nature in which the list of repeals would be made clear so that one would not have to go flicking around all the time like a juggler. I would say also that maybe the secretary of the Department does not feel it is time for consolidation but anybody who does anything about trying to understand what these Bills provide would feel like some consolidation. As I found to my cost, the Acts mentioned here are only about a quarter of those in the Statute Book. You would go mad reading all those Acts. I tried to get a specific piece of information from one Act and I did not manage to track it down. I will ask the Minister afterwards. I think that, first of all, if all these Acts are to be amended in some way there should be a Schedule at the end of the Bill so that we would have some idea of what is being repealed.
Second, I would urge that this whole problem of reviews of pensions for the Defence Forces could be dealt with much more cleanly by one Bill which would give the Minister power to make orders, maybe not to increase pensions, if he has that power, but to make the necessary reviews whenever he felt that he has to rather than bringing in an Act. I should like to say one further thing. I have not been here very long but this is the third Pensions Bill I have had in respect of the Defence Forces in my fours years in the House. Those were the only occasions on which I have seen the Minister for Defence in the Seanad. There is a case for having a long, cool look at legislation to deal with pensions for the Defence Forces.
