Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Friday, 13 Jun 1924

Vol. 7 No. 24

PRIVATE BUSINESS. - DISMISSED AND RESIGNED R.I.C. MEN'S PENSIONS.

Mr. DAVIN

I have been obliged to draw the attention of the Minister for Finance to the matter of the pensions of the resigned and dismissed R.I.C. because of the numerous communications that have been received by myself and the other members of this Party, and, I presume, by other Deputies, in connection with the failure of the Ministry of Finance to give effect to the promises that have been so often given here by the Minister. In August, 1923, a Superannuation Act was passed by which it was intended to give pensions to certain resigned and dismissed R.I.C. where cases were approved by a Committee which had been set up under the auspices of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE took the Chair.

Mr. DAVIN

I understand that when that Act was passed practically all the cases were inquired into by the Committee. Early in last March the Minister made a definite promise in the Dáil that the payment of pensions to people whose cases had been approved of would, in most cases, be made by the 31st March, but that in any case they would all be cleared up in the course of a month or so. Several weeks have passed, and from the communications that I have received and have seen, it would appear that that promise has not been carried out. I do not say that that is due to the Minister. I cannot understand why any one or two officials of the Ministry, who must have been closely associated with the inquiry, who would know all the circumstances of the cases of these men—the 600 men whose cases had been approved of—could not, in the course of five or six weeks, have dealt with them, and have seen that the pensions were paid. Cases of undoubted hardship have come under my notice, and it is due to that fact that I would ask the Minister to make some short statement on the matter, as to why those promises have not been carried out, when he hopes to give effect to them, and, further, when he hopes to publish the list which he promised Deputy Hogan some time ago, of the names of those who had received pensions under the Superannuation Act of 1923. I have one case among my papers where a bank manager lent a certain sum to one of the men whose cases had been approved of, on the definite understanding that the amount would be rapid within a certain period. That was on the assumption that the man, whose case was a clear one, and has been approved of, would be paid the money. I think some good reason is required to be given as to why the money has not been paid in cases of this kind. Deputy O'Connor, speaking on the matter some time ago, stated, and I believe rightly stated, that the Committee over which he presided had gone very carefully into every case, and that fair decisions had been arrived at as far as it was concerned. I do not know what other investigations are necessary if Deputy O'Connor's statement is correct; consequently I do not understand the failure, on the part of the officials of the Ministry, I presume, to give effect to the promises that were made by the Minister for Finance. I hope that he will clear the air in such a manner that outstanding cases will be dealt with, and dealt with very shortly, and save Deputies from receiving communications which, I believe, many of them have no time to reply to.

Mr. BLYTHE

The air is being cleared very rapidly. There are only, I think, about 30 straightforward cases that have not been dealt with now. There are other cases that take some time to decide. For instance, there are about 20 cases of what are described as medically unfits, men who retired from the R.I.C. on the plea that they were medically unfit. They now allege, and perhaps correctly, that they retired out of national sympathies. In a certain number of cases they admit receiving gratuities from the British authorities when they retired. In some of the cases they concealed the fact that they had received a gratuity. I had before me the case of one man who received £350 and who stated he received £253 from the British. It is very doubtful whether a man like that should get a pension or not. It requires some thought to decide it. National sympathies may have been his real reason, and he may have put up the other vague excuse to get what money he could out of the British. Perhaps that is not a sufficient reason for depriving him of a pension, but nevertheless a case like that requires some consideration. There are about 30 cases where men have been only recently demobilised from the Army. During the time they were in the Army they received Army pay and perhaps dependents' allowances. It is necessary to know from the Army what amount they got, and know what amount of arrears is due to them, in view of the fact that they were receiving pay when they would also have been receiving pensions. We have reason to believe from information received that there were people who retired from the R.I.C. for the purpose of, as they say, marrying into farms or public houses. There is the case of the man who retired from the police and married some girl who had a shop or who had a farm, and it requires some consideration again as to whether we are going fully to accept the plea of national sympathy in such cases. Then certain of these resigned people had associated themselves very actively with the Irregulars. There are five or six cases of that sort under consideration. There are 85 who are outside the country, in America or elsewhere. We have not dealt with those, and there are about 100 in the Civic Guard receiving full-time employment, and there will be very little money coming to them but whatever it is we will have to make a calculation which will allow for the Civic Guard pay. Except for these classes of cases where there is some difficulty, there are only about 30 left now. There were more of these questionable cases than I thought there would be, and that has caused a certain amount of delay. In some cases there had to be personal consideration of them by myself, because those cases were to rule other cases, and there were some I could not give a decision on, they were so doubtful, and I had to wait and confer with the Minister for Justice to see if we could arrive at a decision. We are nearly at the end of the thing now, and it is going on quite rapidly. Certainly it has taken a longer time than I would have thought but that is due to their being more questions to deal with than I had anticipated.

Mr. LYONS

Will the Minister give the Deputies who are interested in this question, and who have had several inquiries from different parts of their constituencies, a return of the number of men to whom awards have been given and their names?

Mr. BLYTHE

I hope to be able to give these names very soon.

Mr. P. HOGAN (Clare)

Will the Minister give any opportunity to those who have been cut out by reason of recent circumstances any opportunity of rebutting any statement that may have been given in since the Committee sat to consider their cases?

Mr. BLYTHE

Yes, I certainly will.

The Dáil adjourned at 3.55 p.m. to Tuesday, 17th June.