Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 26 Nov 1924

Vol. 9 No. 16

ADJOURNMENT DEBATE. - ADMINISTRATION OF ARMY PENSIONS ACT.

Major COOPER:

I gave notice to-day that I would raise this evening the question of the administration of the Army Pensions Act, with special reference to the desirability of setting up some appeal board, some independent medical referee, to whom appeals could be made from the decisions of medical boards. I do not think it is doubted or denied in any quarter that there is a good deal of dissatisfaction with the administration of this Army Pensions Act of 1923, which was passed by the last Dáil. I would like to make it clear that I am referring to the Act of 1923 dealing with wound pensions, and not to the Act that we passed three months ago dealing with pensions for men with pre-Truce and National Army service. We have all received complaints in regard to this matter. I should not be surprised if even our junior member has received certain complaints in the course of his election campaign. I am not going to bring forward a great multitude of cases. I prefer bringing forward one good verified case rather than bring forward a good many insufficiently verified cases. Some time ago a man wrote to me who had a certain claim upon me because, in another country, he had served under my command. He was in receipt of a pension which he considered inadequate. He was due for his final Board in October. Before going up I had him examined by a very eminent surgeon, a past President of the Royal College of Surgeons. The only reason that I do not quote his name is because he refused to let me pay him a fee for the examination, and he insisted on doing it for nothing. Here is his certificate.

"I have examined John Donnelly, who was wounded while in the National Army, on December 6th, 1922. Donnelly is at present in a crippled condition, and there is no difficulty in estimating the severity of his wounds. It appears that he was escorting mails from Fermoy to Cork, when the car in which he was driving was ambushed. A bullet struck him in the upper and front portion of the right thigh, shattering the bone. Immediately following the attack the car gave a swerve, and after Donnelly was wounded he was hurled from the car, breaking his right wrist. He lay on the ground from about 12.30 until 4, when he was picked up and brought to the Mercy Hospital, Cork. He was unconscious at this time, and has no recollection of the few days following. He remained in hospital in Cork until March 6th, 1923, a period of about three months. He was then transferred to St. Bricin's Hospital, in which institution he remained for a year, with an interval of two months at the Convalescent Home. Marlborough Hall. He was discharged from the Army in March last. On May 7th he was readmitted to St. Bricin's where he remained a patient until August 26th of the present year. In addition to his wounds, Donnelly has been operated on several times in an endeavour to palliate his condition. His right leg is three inches shorter than his left, the knee is quite stiff and the muscles hopelessly wasted. The fractured bone above his wrist joint is not in good position. The lower fragment is rotated, so that it is impossible for Donnelly to supinate his arm. There is a deviation of the hand towards the side of the thumb, and the lower end of the ulna projects to a corresponding amount. With the right leg in the condition I have described, and the right arm practically disabled, there is. I fear, no hope of Donnelly obtaining employment or being efficient in any branch of labouring work."

I asked specially for a dispassionate opinion that I could stand over. I do not think anybody can dispute that this man suffered very seriously. He spent practically 18 months in hospital, had been operated on several times, and is not, according to expert evidence, capable of taking up any branch of labouring work. He took that opinion and laid it before his medical board. The medical board found he had a 50 per cent. disability, and that he was entitled to a pension of 21/- per week. It is almost impossible for the man, even though, fortunately, he is single, to live on 21/- a week in Dublin; yet, that is all that this board gave him. Naturally, he has a sense of grievance. I suggest that sense of grievance would be lessened if, in the Amending Bill that is to be brought in, men of that sort would be given a chance of appealing to an independent referee not in the service of the Government. I believe independent doctors have been associated with those medical boards recently. That is not generally known, and if it is not it ought to be more widely known. That in itself would not satisfy a man suffering, as this man does suffer, from a certain grievance. He is unfit to earn anything, and he is only entitled to a 50 per cent. disability pension. If the State were in a position to offer him, and all those disabled men, special employment, it would be another matter. I do not know whether this man would be fit to do clerical work. I believe he did act as an orderly room clerk in the National Army for a time. I do not know whether there are any vacancies for clerks who have been in the service of the country. In Italy all the attendants in museums, picture galleries, and places of that kind are men who were maimed in the service of their country. Something should be done for those men who are disabled in our country, either in the direction of finding them State employment suited to their disabilities, or in the direction of giving them more sympathetic treatment under the Pensions Act. I have to anticipate what the Minister will say in reply to me. He may lay the blame, not on the boards, but on the Act. He would be justified in doing so. The Schedule of the Act has been drawn so closely that it would be almost impossible for injustice not to arise. I am taking this opportunity to draw attention to this matter while there is an Amending Act on the stocks which the Minister for Justice told us on Friday was going to be introduced within ten days or so. We gather from the Minister for Defence that the matter was not yet fully considered, and that he was not going to commit himself. While that Act is still in a nebulous form, I want to put the claim as strongly forward as I can that the Schedule should not be so rigid, that there should be an appeal to an independent referee and also that any alteration or reform should be retrospective.

It is not probable that we shall have large numbers of men injured within the next two years—I hope to Heaven not. We want to provide for the men who have been injured while saving the State two years ago. I am sorry to bring this matter before the new Minister for Defence at such an early stage of his Ministerial career, but the matter is urgent. While realising that he has had the courage to take up a task full of difficulties and, I am afraid, loaded with debts, I nevertheless congratulate myself upon having a fresh mind to appeal to, a mind that will view the problem from a new angle.

Mr. A. BYRNE:

I rise to support Deputy Cooper's suggestion. I will satisfy myself also with giving only one case. I am not speaking in the interests of any particular man, though I know many persons who have grievances at the present moment and who have reason to complain about the treatment meted out to them by the pensions authorities. The case I have in mind is one that occurred about two years ago. Some two or three men of the National Army got into a street brawl, and one of them was shot dead. The verdict at the inquest was that the man was shot dead by some person or persons unknown, enemies of the State. That man left a widow and children. He was wearing the uniform of the National Army, was shot dead in the streets of Dublin, and we must assume he was shot dead by enemies of the State; otherwise, actual warfare. The Pensions Authorities intimated to the widow that she was not entitled to any pension whatsoever, because her husband met his death as the result of a street brawl. The shooting took place 18 months ago in Capel Street. There was a big report in the newspapers about these men having a game of rings in some licensed house in the vicinity of the North Wall and that they were followed on the way home. I tried to bring the case before the Pensions Authorities on more than one occasion, but because of the strictness of the Act referred to by Deputy Cooper, they told the poor widow that she was entitled to nothing. The latest application from this poor woman is one for poor law relief. I hope the new Minister will review that case. I am not exaggerating the circumstances. The newspapers contained particulars of the case, and I sent cuttings to the Defence Department. On review I trust something will be done for the widow and children of this man who served his country well. Do not leave her in the position that she will have to apply for relief. Her husband, let it be remembered, wore the uniform of the National Army. It was because of that, appearently, the man was attacked in the street in troubled times. I will take another opportunity of putting the full facts before the Minister, and I trust he will have the case reconsidered with a view to assisting the widow and children.

Mr. T. MURPHY:

I am also interested in this question from perhaps a slightly different angle from that mentioned by Deputy Cooper. I have not in my mind any particular grievances against the medical board, but I would like to draw the Minister's attention to another matter in connection with the administration of the Army Pensions Act. I have pretty reliable information, from cases that have come under my own notice, that the reports made on claims of this kind in connection with the means of claimants are very variable. I have one case in mind, the case of a man who lives in my constituency in my own town, a man who has been associated with the National movement for 30 or 40 years. When I was a child, and when many people older than I, were children, he was connected with the movement that eventually led up to the Treaty. This man has been an invalid for a number of years. His son was killed in the Kilmichael ambush in 1920, and as a result of that man's activities, and as a result of the time he has given and the sacrifices he has made for the movement, his business as a working cooper in that town has been absolutely ruined, and he is to-day in fact in practically a penniless state, except for contributions that are made to him by one member of his family.

I am quite satisfied that a report was made in that case that he was not at all dependent on his son who was killed. I am fully satisfied that the report was wrong from beginning to end. On the strength of that report the case was turned down. The facts in connection with the report in that case apply to a number of other cases, I think that the Minister ought to satisfy himself that the information he gets in connection with claims of this kind from the Gárda Síochána, and, I think, from military sources too, is correct, and that until the Minister is perfectly satisfied that the claim is not reasonable, it ought not to be turned down. I think that the facilities for reviewing claims ought to be extended, and that more intelligent consideration should be given to cases of that kind. I have also in mind very deserving cases of people who are poor and where very small awards are made, and I join with other Deputies in appealing to the Minister to look into cases of that kind in a more sympathetic way in the future.

MINISTER for DEFENCE (Mr. P. Hughes):

The last two Deputies who have spoken have mentioned cases that do not come within the terms of the notice that Deputy Bryan Cooper has handed in. My position in the matter is that I have to administer the law as I find it, and I am going to do that as sympathetically as the law will allow. Certain representations were made to my predecessor in matters of this kind, and he was good enough to have independent medical references appointed upon the Board. What happens, as my information goes, is this, that when a man is sent down from the Army Board to this Wound Pensions Board he is examined, and on that Board for the past three months there are four of the foremost surgeons in Dublin, whose names I propose to give to the House, and the Board never sits without one of these gentlemen acting on it. Their names are as follows:—Mr. Maunsell, President of the Royal College of Surgeons; Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Barniville, and Mr. Keegan. The Board never sits without one or other of these, and these are absolutely independent men as far as that Board is concerned. Their functions are to see that justice is done between the person who is appealing and the State.

It is all very well to say that people have not had sympathetic consideration from this Board, but I can go further and say that any of these surgeons have the option of bringing the actual person before him and examining him personally, and that was done no later than yesterday; an applicant has been brought up and examined personally by the surgeon, and if anybody will say that any of the gentlemen I have mentioned are not independent surgeons in the City of Dublin, I think he would be going a little too far. The medical report is forwarded from the Director of Medical Services in all cases as far as these wound pensions are concerned, and as far as I can know from the short time that I have been in this office and from the information I can get, every case is considered on its merits, and considered in the most sympathetic fashion so that I do not think that, with the exception, perhaps, of that which Deputy Cooper has made, the cases mentioned come within the terms of the question raised by the Deputy. If the Deputy wants me to make any announcement that would anticipate legislation that may be coming forward, I cannot give him any satisfaction on that point. All I can say on the matter is that if any genuine case is brought to my notice, I will have it examined and I will do my best to see that justice is done according to the law, as it stands at present.

The Dáil adjourned at 8.45, until 3 o'clock on Thursday, November 27th.