First of all, I want to congratulate the Minister on following so faithfully the good example set by the previous Government in deciding to increase old age and blind pensions to a maximum of 20/- per week. As the House knows, and as the Official Records prove, we indicated on the Second Stage of the Social Welfare Bill that we proposed to submit an amendment to provide for increasing old age and blind pensions to £1 per week on the Committee Stage of the Bill. An amendment in precisely the same terms as is now embodied in this Bill was submitted by me for consideration by the House on the Committee Stage of that measure. In fact, that amendment was printed with the official list of amendments. The Minister, therefore, was in the position that he knew we intended to do this; our policy had been definitely revealed. He knew also that he could not run away from the legislation we proposed and he simply went into the Department, got a copy of what we proposed to do, got the parliamentary draftsman to put it into legal form and embodied it in this Bill in exactly the same terms as the amendment we proposed on the Committee Stage of the Social Welfare Bill, line by line, word by word, figure by figure, comma by comma.
I congratulate the Minister on having gone to such a well-proven fount for inspiration when he wanted to do something to improve the lot of the old age and blind pensioners. If the Minister pursues that course while he remains in the Department of Social Welfare, though I do not think he will be very long there, because he must recognise that he is really a minority Government held together by a few weak links which will not hold when the first political storm breaks, and if he follows in the footsteps he is following in to-day he may manage for a while to avert political storms in relation to social legislation.
The Minister is to be congratulated in doing exactly what we told the House we intended to do but I am somewhat surprised at the line he has taken in his speech to-day and at the character of the Bill he is introducing. One finds it difficult to believe that Deputy Dr. Ryan, the Minister for Social Welfare, is the same Deputy Dr. Ryan who spoke from the Opposition Benches on 2nd March last. On that date, Deputy Dr. Ryan, as he then was, told the House what his views were in relation to old age pensions and in relation to the means test. He said then that if Fianna Fáil were back in office, they would do the things which he then wrote into the public records of this House. Now, Deputy Dr. Ryan has been in office for a few weeks. He could quite easily have produced a Bill giving effect to what he promised here on 2nd March in respect of the means test. If he comes back here with a Bill, or amends this Bill, to conform with the promises he made here on 2nd March, I guarantee him the full support of the Labour Party.
Deputy Dr. Ryan, the present Minister for Social Welfare, could quite easily have embodied in this Bill the promise he made here on 2nd March but all he has chosen to do is to put forward his own proposals for a modification of the means test and to keep blindly the proposals which I submitted to the House. If there has been such a conversion of Deputy Dr. Ryan, Minister for Social Welfare, to the proposals which I submitted we ought to know the reasons. On 2nd March Deputy Dr. Ryan stood here as a defender of a liberal approach, even a radical approach, to a modification of the means test. What I want to find out from the Minister is what induced him to run away from the promises which he made here on 2nd March? Why has the Minister for Social Welfare not stuck to his guns? Why has he abandoned the stand he made here on 2nd March? Listen to Deputy Dr. Ryan on the 2nd March and compare his speech then with the Bill he has introduced now. On that occasion he said, as given in column 1112:—
"I said that I was going to make certain proposals and that if the Minister did not implement them a Fianna Fáil Government would implement them. Keeping that in mind, I have to be careful."
In other words, it was no reckless or extemporaneous speech, bearing in mind that what he said represented a covenant with the people and with this House that he would do in the future when he came back to office what he was promising to do. Keeping that in mind, he said he would have to be careful. He went on:—
"I do not know whether everyone should get a pension or not. I do not say that they should not. At least it appears to me there is a great waste of human endeavour if you say to a young widow of 22: ‘We are going to pension you and you need not work for the rest of your life.' I think we should require that a widow would endeavour at least to get work if she is left at a certain age with no children. However, that is a case to be considered.
I would apply the same conditions to old age pensions—that they would be applied to all classes of the population except the very wealthy and that they would be paid for out of taxation. Again, the means test arises. But we can get over that by the same conditions as I propose for widows and orphans—that there would be no means test for an insured worker who retires and draws the old age pension, no means test for the small farmer, say, under £25 valuation, and that outside that the means test should be £100 per year in cash. When I say £25 valuation, there might be a good argument put up to make it £30 or £20, but I think in or about £25 is fair enough, and £100 cash is in or about the sum which also should be laid down. After all, £100 cash is less than £2 per week and, if the old age pensioner gets another £1, he has not too much. Putting the means test at £100 would not be too high in my opinion."
In other words, on the 2nd March last Deputy Dr. Ryan would allow the person who had £2 a week to get a full old age pension of 20/- and he said that if they got £3 it was not too much. But he comes here within three months and says that if one has more than 25/- he will get no pension at all. I would like to hear the Minister's explanation as to why he promised this House, in well chosen language, deliberately used, bearing in mind that the quotation could be used against him at a future date, that he would introduce legislation to enable a person who had £2 to get the full pension of 20/- and on the first Bill he introduces he provides that if they have 25/6 they will get no pension at all. Surely we are entitled to know why he changed his mind since the 2nd March. Why did he say then that he would implement such a promise and yet when he gets a chance of doing it he runs away from the promise? We are entitled to some explanation for that change of front. We are entitled to know, too. whether this is one of the first election promises that is being abandoned by the new Government.
In Deputy Dr. Ryan's discourse on the 2nd March we see his views generally on old age pensions. I do not want to go into that subject now in so far as it relates to the main scheme of social security, but as we are discussing old age pensions it might be no harm to remind the Minister that, when he was speaking about old age or retirement pensions at 65 in March last, he said he was opposed to paying old age pensions to persons at 65. Subsequently he developed some curious opinion that they might get sick pay or unemployment benefit after 65, even though they were not sick or unemployed.