asked the Minister for Finance whether he is aware that remittances sent home to parents by emigrant children are being taken into account for the purposes of assessing the means of applicants for the old age pension, and in view of the fact that these sums are gifts and not regular income, whether he will direct that they are not to be taken into account when assessing means in old age pensions cases.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Emigrants' Remittances.
Remittances sent to parents for their own use by emigrant children are taken into account in assessing for old age pensions purposes the means of the parents. Under the Old Age Pensions Acts in calculating the means of a person for such purposes, account must be taken of all income in cash which that person may reasonably expect to receive during the succeeding year. Accordingly, the answer to the second part of the question is in the negative.
Does the Minister realise that these remittances are purely gifts, and that if they are to be taken into account when assessing income for the purposes of the Old Age Pensions Act they will stop? Is the Minister aware that British pensions were cut in order to bring them down to 6/- because his Department took the British pensions into consideration when the recipients were applying for old age pensions, and that if you take fortuitous income of that kind from outside into consideration the effect is to reduce the income from outside in order to allow the Government to take over their share of the burden?
I should like to answer one of the Deputy's supplementary questions.
Then confine it to remittances from America.
The Deputy asked me if I was aware that if we continued to take those gifts, as the Deputy called them, into consideration, the gifts would cease. All I can say is that since the pensions code was first introduced those gifts have been taken into consideration, and they have not ceased yet.
Is the Minister aware that in fact these gifts were not taken into consideration; that it is only very recently that the pensions officers started asking people whether they received those gifts or not; that the vast majority of pensioners to whom this inquiry is addressed deny receiving them, and it is quite impossible to prove that they did because they are gifts?
The Deputy's information is at variance with mine, and I have no reason to believe that I am wrongly informed.
How can the Minister's Department prove the existence of amounts which depend on the inclination of a child living in America as to whether he is going to send money in six months' time? How can that be taken as regular income?
I do not know whether the Deputy is aware of sub-section (1) of Section 2 of the Old Age Pensions Act, 1911, which lays down the law in this matter. I would refer the Deputy to that sub-section.
The Minister is making a great mistake.