Isé an freagra atá ann do sna daoine atá ag gearán agus ag rá ná fuil seans ag na sean daoine an pinsean d'fháil na go bhfuil dhá mhiliún trí cheathrú púnt ag dul gach bliain do sna sean daoine mar phinsin seanaoise. Tá tuairim a hochtadh cuid de cháin an Stáit ag dul do sna sean daoine mar phinsin. Sé sin an freagra don dream atá ag gearán fán rud so.
Deputy Ward has made certain statements arising out of Section 2 of this Bill which, I think, he ought not to make and simply leave there without any evidence, good, bad or indifferent to support them. He suggests that under the British administration paragraph (d) of sub-section (1) of Section 2 of the Act of 1911 was practically not enforced except in respect of the benefit or the privilege that was involved or the benefit or privilege legally coming to the person. He draws a distinction between the spirit of the administration of that particular section under the British and the spirit of the administration now. He makes the additional statement that the Department of Local Government and Public Health in dealing with appeals, or in the part of the work they have to deal with, are at variance with the Department of Finance. I deny both the first and the second of these suggestions. I think, if the Deputy cannot bring forward any substantiation of them, that some modification of his statement is required.
As far as the first part of Section 2 is concerned, one of the main things it means is that the maintenance of persons who are applying for the old age pension in the place where they are being maintained shall be disregarded and that persons who are fully maintained, clothed and fed shall be entitled to the full 10/- pension once they come to the age of seventy, apart altogether from the kind of maintenance which they receive. There never was an intention in introducing the Old Age Pension Act that that should be so. It is not our intention at present that that shall be so. The additional cost that that would mean is of such a nature that there is no prospect of the Executive Council agreeing to a change in the position that would bring that about. We have to compare the amount that is paid for old age pensions at present with the amount that is paid for other social services and we have to see how these things differ, say, in certain counties.
Take the total cost of old age pensions. Deputy Ward says, arising out of certain other statements that were made, that we ought to pay attention to the way in which our social services are developed here so that there shall be no disparity between the social services here and the social services in other places. When we deal with our social services, such as they are, we must see that we get the best results from the money that is being spent. If we look at the amount of money spent on old age pensions and the amount of money spent by the different local bodies in connection with the poor law, we must ask ourselves whether we shall get better social services by an increase of moneys under the poor law or an increase of moneys under old age pensions. The total cost of old age pensions at present is £2,735,000. Before the Act of 1928, it was something like £200,000 less than that. I want to take the figures for the year ended March, 1928, and compare them with the moneys expended under the poor law for that year. The expenditure for old age pensions for the year ended March, 1928, was £2,525,218. The expenditure under the poor law for medical charities, institutions, out-door relief and salaries and pensions of the officers concerned was £1,657,479. So that we were spending on old age pensions half as much again as we were spending on the whole of our poor law services throughout the country.
There were special parts of the country in which the discrepancy was very much greater. We were spending in Mayo more than five times the amount on old age pensions that was being expended in Mayo on medical charities and poor law institutions, such as hospitals and county homes, and out-door relief. In Donegal, we were spending more than three and a half times the amount spent on the poor law. One of the reasons is that the size of the holdings in these areas was such that the costs of maintenance, in assessing whether the persons were entitled to pensions or not, were more eliminated than they were in some of the eastern counties. The percentage of farmers living on holdings of fifteen acres and less in Mayo was 47.5; in Donegal it was 46.5. The average value of the holdings of from ten to fifteen acres in Mayo was £4 15s., and in Donegal £4 12s.
The result was that maintenance was hardly taken into consideration when considering old age pensions at all and then we have the cost of old age pensions in these areas soaring to five times in Mayo and three and a half times in Donegal the amount expended on poor law relief generally. If maintenance is not to be taken into consideration in assessing persons' means when they apply for an old age pension, you can rely on having something like that increase in the expenditure on old age pensions as compared with the expenditure on poor law; that is, on medical charities, institutions and home assistance you can expect an increase of that particular kind over those areas where now, because of the size of the farms upon which the people live, maintenance is taken into consideration pretty much. So that, while an estimate may be given of £200,000 or £250,000 as a result of the operation of Section 2 of this Bill, if it is passed, that figure might very easily be exceeded.
As regards the second part of the section, the proposal is that approximately £50,000, now borne by local authorities for the maintenance of the old people in institutions, should be transferred from the local authorities to the pensions fund. From the beginning, old age pensions have been dissociated from poor relief, but the change that has taken place in the administration of poor law, with the doing away of workhouses and the setting up of county homes, has bridged over to some extent the difference between old age pensions and some assistance given locally to old people. But, when you take into consideration the discrepancy between the amount paid in old age pensions in the different counties and the amount spent in poor law, there is very little case for taking another £50,000 and transferring it from the shoulders of local authorities to the Central Fund, which is already bearing two and three quarter millions for old age pensions.
The point has been raised that persons in receipt of old age pensions when they enter poor law institutions or hospitals lose their pensions for the time being and that if they leave these institutions they have very considerable difficulty in getting the pensions restored to them. In fact, that is not so. The matter has had a good deal of consideration, and Deputies will find that in practice when an old age pensioner proposes to leave such an institution he can make the necessary application for the restoration of his pension a month or so before he leaves and that very little time elapses between his leaving the institution and his getting the pension again. I understand there is not, and certainly there ought not to be, any very great difficulty in connection with that matter.
Sub-section (3) would give rise to very great anomalies and would leave persons with pensions to which they would not be entitled. As the position is at present, when one of a couple of the kind contemplated dies, the case is gone into again entirely on its merits as if it were a fresh application by the old age pensioner involved. The case is decided on the new facts, and decided with a very considerable amount of sympathy as well.
The point is made by Deputy Ward that the actual operation in practice of Section 7 (1) of the Act of 1924 is that a person who assigns his farm within three years of his being 70 years of age may get himself into the position that if he applies for the pension a week before the three years have elapsed from the date of his assigning the farm, he may be deprived of his old age pension for all time. The original intention of the sub-section was that a person who continued after he was 67 years of age in the possession of a holding of a particular kind could not assign, for the purposes of the Old Age Pensions Act, the income of that particular holding; that is, when he came to apply for the old age pension at the age of 70 that the income from the holding which he held when he was 67 would be taken into consideration and continued in consideration in respect of his pension. About 1928 it transpired that this sub-section did not actually effect what it was intended to effect, and that, in fact, what it effected was that for a period of three years such a person would have taken into consideration as part of his means the income he might expect from holding such a farm, but that after three years he was completely clear of any effect from the holding of that farm. When his means for pension purposes were being assessed. Just as there was confusion from 1924 to 1928 arising out of it being understood that a certain effect was achieved by the Act, so there has apparently been, subsequent to 1928, some confusion with regard to the application of the legal decision then given. But I doubt if the Deputy can point to any case of the kind that he mentioned. I would be very glad to hear of such a case, because it is not the interpretation of this sub-section that it does anything other than secure for the period of three years after the assigning of the farm that the income of that farm will be taken into consideration as part of the person's means when assessing them for the purposes of the Old Age Pensions Act.