My experience of the interpretation of the Old Age Pensions Act in a general way is that it is most unfair to the applicant. If I instance a case where applicants are refused pensions on the grounds of means I will then have to investigate upon what justification. In order to do so I will have to deal first with the application which must of necessity be made by the applicant. That application is sent to the local pension officer, who in most cases—I am not exaggerating when I say this— is a person with no practical knowledge of conditions in the country. The pension officers I have met are largely taken from the cities and towns, and they have no local knowledge of conditions in the rural areas.
Sometimes they are mere boys and they are asked to go and investigate claims for pensions. Their practical knowledge of the conditions in the rural areas is nil. I cannot understand on what basis they make calculations of means. I have been over ten years a member of a pensions sub-committee and I have never heard that basis explained. These officers are instructed from headquarters, either by the Minister for Finance or by his Department, to calculate the means of applicants for the old age pensions. They calculate the means on some basis and they are instructed not to disclose that basis to the sub-committee before which the claims are heard. Leaving aside the ordinary qualifications of these officers, who attain the standard of 100 per cent. in their civil service examinations, in the great majority of cases they are men with no practical knowledge of conditions in the country. Their sole basis of calculation is determined by some figure submitted to them by the Department under which they work. That shows how incapable these men are to calculate the actual income of applicants for the pension in rural districts. I was told some time ago about a pension officer who had to return the apparent means of an applicant and who mentioned that the person had two pigs. The supervisor, anxious to elucidate further information as to the possible value of the pigs, sent a memorandum back to the officer asking what class of pigs they were, whether bonhams, cows, or boars. The officer in his reply stated that he had not very much knowledge of pigs but that from appearance he believed they were between five and six years old.
That would be an ordinary answer to expect from most of the pension officers who are sent out to investigate the means of the farmer, including his pig stock, poultry stock, and farm stock generally; because these men, some of them boys, have no practical knowledge whatever af the conditions that exist in rural areas. To send these chaps around with definite instructions from headquarters here in Dublin, with no knowledge whatever of the rural conditions that exist in this country and their prejudice against those living in the rural areas —the city man's prejudice against the unfortunate person living in the country, regarding him as a person who has everything at his disposal, with all his advantages to contrast as against the conditions of the city man—is, I say, an unfair way of calculating the means of claimants. The pension officer is in most cases a city man or a townsman. Along these lines, I do assert that no justice or fair play has been extended to the applicants for old age pensions in rural areas. It is too much under present conditions to expect. One of the most extraordinary things that I have always protested against in connection with the appointment to the position of Excise officer of a boy from the city or town is that he is debarred from taking education from those who could give it to him on this important question of calculating the means. The pension officer is not permitted to give or discuss the basis of the calculation of means of the applicant before the only tribunal before which the applicant can come. He is prevented from discussing the question of means with the sub-committee.
As a matter of fact, it is not necessary for the pension officer at all to attend that sub-committee. He goes to the applicant's home without giving notice of his visit. The applicant is quite unaware of the time when he is to visit and quite unprepared to meet him. Having investigated the question of means in his own way, the pension officer calculates the total sum of the applicant's income. Not alone does he take down the statement of the applicant, but he goes over the farm and sees for himself. He checks what he sees, by what he has heard from the applicant on the question of means.
Having done that, then there is the sub-committee which is composed of people from the locality, people who are not old age pensioners themselves, but people who are responsible to the extent that they are public representatives. It is only public representatives who can sit on that committee. These people have full local knowledge as to the value of the means of the farmer. But they sit bewildered because the pension officer, after his assessment of the calculation of means, gives in round figures what he estimates these at. If he is there—and he may not necessarily be there—when they ask how he has calculated certain items of stock set out his memorandum, and what value he puts on two cows, four cows, or one cow, or on a certain number of pigs, or on a certain number of poultry, he will refuse to answer.
I ask the House is that an honest attempt to enable a fair calculation of means to be estimated? You have a pension officer with no knowledge whatever of local conditions, but only instructions from the Minister for Finance or his Department upon the calculation of means. You have his sum total set down in round figures. That is submitted to the committee of representative people who know all about the business of their own locality, people who sit by right of statute in their position as a sub-committee to investigate pension claims. Yet the pension officer will refuse to discuss details as to how he estimates the means.
We then come to the next stage. The sub-committee having discussed or heard the case put forward by the applicant, and using their own commonsense judgment and practical experience as to the value in full of the applicant's income, estimate what they consider within the law should be the fair pension given to that person. I am speaking of this matter as one who has had ten years' experience at least. I do assert, subject of course to contradiction, that in most cases the amount submitted by the pension officer is doubted very much by the sub-committee and refuted by them, and in the majority of cases their calculation or estimate of the means is very much less.
We then come to the next stage. Regardless of what decision the sub-committee may come to, the pension officer's estimate will stand. The case is then submitted to the Appeals Board. There the most extraordinary injustice of all occurs. You have on the one hand the expert whose duty it is to examine the claimant's case, to write up all details of his case and furnish it according to the technical requirements of his training and of his office. You have on the other hand the unfortunate applicant whose only appeal consists of going before a collection of men sitting as a sub-committee. After that the sub-committee hears the evidence. The position is that that evidence is not taken down. They are not supplied with a secretary, whose duty it is to furnish a report, or with a stenographer who would take notes of the applicant's evidence. The decision come to by that committee as to the applicant's means is generally in contradiction to the decision or evidence of the pension officer. I want to have detailed information furnished according to the technique of his office by the pension officer who prepared that information at the dictation or request to the office of which he is a servant. On the other hand, there is merely the submission of the contradictory information of the subsidiary committee. The Department in this matter sit behind closed doors until the case is finally decided. The pension officer sits behind closed doors and the decision is given.
There you have a fair outline of the conditions under which the old age pension applicants labour from start to finish. I do not think that a more unfair or a more unjust application of any order of Government could exist than exits in the particular case of the old age pensioner. I listened to Deputy White. He referred to the injustice that existed in calculating as part of the income the stack of turf owned by the applicant. If that were the only injustice that existed I think it would be a very small detail. I have no doubt Deputy White is sincere in his objection and he has before his mind some cases in which a stack of turf did operate unjustly against the applicant. But I have in mind a series of cases accumulated that would justify me in making a considered statement from my ten years' experience as a member of a sub-committee of pensions. I submit that the whole administration of old age pensions is biassed and unjust as far as the applicants are concerned.
If my objection consisted as Deputy White's of minor cases such as the value of a stack of turf I might consider that it would be sufficient to raise my voice and mention these matters to have them corrected, but I am afraid that Deputy White in confining himself to that minor objection lacked the experience of one or two years which would be necessary on an old age pension committee, to show him that the objection did not consist in the unjust valuation of a stack of turf but in the unjust administration of the whole Act by the State. I do not like to go into the whole matter. Probably it would be wearisome, but there is just this one other item to which I would like to refer and it is this, that again the bias of officialism towards old age pension applicants is very evident. When we come to deal with the case of the claimant and his difficulties, I can show legitimate difficulties in procuring the requisite evidence of age.
Recently there was an instance—one of a number—where an applicant could not find his age in the official records. At the time of his application he was resident in County Leitrim, but he was born in an adjoining county, and any reference to his age could only be found in the parish register or possibly in the school. The man was an invalid, and his wife was comparatively aged like himself. They were people without means. The onus of proof as to age rested on them. I know that applicant's wife had to borrow that from her neighbours, a sum of money not very large, to enable her to pay the bus fare to a place within ten miles of the district in which alone she could find evidence as to the age of her husband. Having borrowed the money she walked the remainder of the journey. Having found some evidence of age, she started on her return journey, and she found herself deposited by the bus at eleven o'clock at night eleven miles from her own home, under conditions that some people would consider to be inhuman if applied to people of more vigorous years. I do assert that where cases of that sort arise that the machinery of the State, at not so much expense to the State, should be sufficient to enable investigations as to age in such cases to be carried out and undertaken by the pension officer or by some official method, rather than inflict undue hardship upon applicants. I refer to it as one item of a number of items of hardship that my experience of pension work for a number of years has given me. This whole question of the administration of old age pensions is worked in a biassed way by the Department to secure, as far as can be secured, regardless of what a man's means may be, the safeguarding, I suppose, the Minister for Finance would say of the general taxpayer. I do not think that the methods are right, and I hope the House will express itself in that direction when the vote is being taken.
