I move:—
That the Dáil hereby approves of the Royal Irish Constabulary (Resigned and Dismissed) Pensions Order, 1936, made on the 25th day of February, 1936, by the Minister for Finance under Section 5 of the Superannuation and Pensions Act, 1923 (No. 34 of 1923), and laid before the Dáil on the 24th day of March, 1936.
This Order is being made under Section 5 of the Superannuation and Pensions Act, 1923, an Act which empowers the Minister for Finance to authorise from time to time by Order the grant of pensions, allowances or gratuities to ex-members of the R.I.C., and to regulate by any such Order the conditions under which pensions are to be payable. This Order is consequent upon a report of a Committee of Inquiry which was set up in 1934 to investigate outstanding claims for pensions, as a result of which investigations 50 new pensions will fall to be granted. Briefly, the terms upon which the applicants have sustained their claim are that three years' service was necessary to qualify for a pension, and that no pensions would be payable to any person who had joined the R.I.C. after the 18th March, 1918, which, as Deputies will remember, was the date of the Mansion House anti-conscription meeting.
Under the terms of the Order, pensions are payable as from the 1st April, 1936. I do not think that it is necessary for me to say anything further in regard to this matter except to remind the House that, so far as claims for pensions are concerned, the original undertaking of the Sinn Féin organisation given to members of the R.I.C. in 1920 was that if they resigned from the force at that period they would not be subject to the social ostracism which had been decreed by the Dáil, and that an attempt would be made to provide employment for them. I think the State has done everything within its competence to honour that undertaking, not merely in the letter, but in the spirit.
