Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 22 Feb 1956

Vol. 154 No. 5

Local Government (Superannuation) Bill, 1955—Report and Final Stages.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. O'Donnell)

I move amendment No. 1:—

In page 6, Section 2, line 32, before ") on" to insert "or a day on which he was on permanent service".

This is a drafting point. The days which it is intended to treat as service days here are days comprised in normal periods of training in summer camps and so forth for members of the First Line Reserve, An Forsa Cosanta Aitiúil and An Sluagh Muiridhe. The definition as it stands would, however, cover also periods during which the Reserve Defence Force is called out on permanent service. Such periods are dealt with already in paragraph (g) of sub-section (1) of Section 34. The amendment will remedy the duplication.

Mr. James Tully

Does that cover people on F.C.A. service?

Mr. O'Donnell

Yes.

Amendment put and agreed to.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Amendment No. 2, in the name of Deputy O'Malley, has been ruled out of order as it imposes a charge on the rates. Amendments Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 7, in the names of Deputies McGrath and Jack Lynch, and amendment No. 6, in the name of Deputy Calleary, have been ruled out of order, as all these amendments tend to impose a charge on State funds.

With regard to amendment No. 8, in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order No. 98, the Bill must be recommitted in respect of this amendment, as it imposes a charge on the rates.

Bill recommitted for the purpose of taking amendment No. 8.

Mr. O'Donnell

I move amendment No. 8:—

In page 29, Section 48, line 41, before ", no" insert "(other than a service day of a person whose name was entered pursuant to sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of Section 63 of the Act of 1948 in the register maintained by a local authority under Section 38 of that Act, which occurred between the commencement in relation to the local authority of Part III of that Act and the time when his name was so entered)".

Under sub-section 3 of this section contributions must be paid in respect of service days occurring between the date of the commencement of Part III of the 1948 Act and the commencement of Part III of this Bill before they can be reckoned for pension purposes. It has, however, now come to notice that established servants under the 1948 Act are entitled to reckon some of these days free of contribution. Servants had a period of six months from the commencement of Part III of the 1948 Act to opt for the present scheme. If they opted they were deemed to be established — that is, pensionable — as and from the commencement of Part III, but their liability for contributions commenced only from the date their names were entered on the register of established servants; that is, they had a period of anything up to six months of free service. Part III, as it stands, inadvertently requires payment of contributions in respect of the free period. The amendment will remedy this by excluding the free period from liability to contributions.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended on recommittal, reported and received for final consideration.

Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Mr. Desmond

It is only right that the position should be made clear that this Bill, in our opinion, is nothing like the Bill we hoped it would be. Circumstances prevented us from having certain improvements made in this Bill. I am sorry to say that at this stage, while letting the Bill pass into law, we have to admit here and now that, before long, if we are to give justice as justice must be given to the employees of local authorities, more amending legislation will have to be introduced by whatever Minister or whatever Government may hold office. I sincerely hope the time will not be long when such amending legislation will be introduced.

We spent a good deal of time, both in Committee and in discussions with the Minister and his officials over the past 12 months, trying to have introduced here a progressive measure to remedy the defects affecting employees classified as either officers or servants of local authorities. Many people outside this House were not aware that, during the discussions on the Committee Stage last week, many amendments were put down by members of the Labour Party, and it was not just a case of those amendments not being moved; it was a case that, when I noticed it during an interlude in the discussion on these amendments last week, I personally, as one member of the Labour Party, drew attention to the fact that amendments were not moved because they had been ruled out of order. Not alone was that not made known to the public, but it was not recorded even in our Official Debates.

Whether we like it or not, we have to be prepared now to say that much that should be enshrined in this Bill is being omitted. We bow to the ruling of the Chair. We accept majority rule, where it comes through the individual holding the high office of Ceann Comhairle. But even at this stage we have every reason to say that we are totally dissatisfied with some of the decisions. After all, the Minister has come a long way towards helping local authorities by saying that he, holding the office as Minister for Local Government, is prepared to make provision for pensions for servants, as they may be termed, and employees of local authorities. What is wrong in our saying that local authorities should be made to accept what the Minister is freely offering? We fail to understand why any suggestion should be made to us that that, in itself, rules us out, because of financial commitments.

There is much I shall have to discuss perhaps at a later stage. As I said at the outset, while this Bill, in its own way, may be giving certain advantages, it is not going to give any of the advantages that we envisaged should be offered to these people, who have been denied these advantages all the years, advantages to which we maintain and have always upheld, they are entitled. I do not wish to delay the House, but I do say that this Bill will not go down in history as the most outstanding Bill introduced here for the improvement of legislation affecting workers in the employment of local authorities. It will not go down as an outstanding piece of legislation for the advancement of certain sections who may be classified as "officers of local authorities". As time goes on and the many weaknesses in the Bill become apparent, not alone to representatives of local authorities, but to the Minister and hierarchy in the Custom House, we will be proved right in the amendments we tabled in order to improve this Bill. They may, by then, be long overdue. Eventually, in order to improve the superannuation system in local government, these amendments will, with the help of Providence, not alone be introduced, but carried in this House.

Mr. J. Lynch

I am afraid I will not be able to say much in praise of this Bill. In so far as it purports in its Explanatory Memorandum to be a substantial improvement on the Act it amends, I am afraid I can only say that the Bill has failed lamentably. When we on this side of the House, in conjunction with our colleagues on the other side, sought to have the Bill amended in order to relieve hardships that undoubtedly exist as a result of the passage of the last Act, we did so in the hope that we could truly label this Bill a substantial improvement on the Act it purports to amend. Unfortunately this is not the position. We were told that some of the shortcomings of the present Bill, if they were to disappear, might open the flood-gates of demands. I submit that was no excuse. If injustices were being done, the impact the removal of such injustices might have on local or State funds was not a valid excuse and should not have been taken into consideration; it was not a valid excuse for not having such hardships alleviated and injustices set aside.

I will not refer to the amendments that Deputy Desmond's colleagues and my colleague and I sought to introduce. The Chair, in its judgment, ruled them out of order. They cannot, therefore, be moved. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the amendments now appearing here on the Report Stage and the amendments that appeared on the Committee Stage are proof that disabilities exist, and continue to exist, in so far as the employment and superannuation of local government officials are concerned. Until such time as these are alleviated, we cannot claim to have a proper superannuation system for local government employees.

When I spoke on the Second Reading, I said that, in my opinion, the Bill should have been recast. I said that for two reasons. One was that I felt that the Local Government (Superannuation) Bill, 1955, which is the responsibility of the Minister for Local Government, affects officers of local authorities who are more directly responsible to other Ministers. When one seeks to investigate their conditions of employment to try to alleviate the disabilities from which they claim they suffer, one is often in doubt as to which Minister is ultimately responsible, whether it be the Minister for Local Government himself, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Education, in some respects, or the Minister for Social Welfare, in other respects. Therefore, I think the time has come when some codification of local government law, in so far as it affects the employment of local government employees, is necessary and long overdue.

I can only repeat what Deputy Desmond has said, that nobody can by any means claim on behalf of this Bill that it is the last word on this particular type of legislation. Hardships do exist and disabilities are there to be set aside and remedied. As long as they are there, I am afraid amending legislation will be necessary, and necessary in the very near future.

Mr. James Tully

I, like the two previous speakers, must add my voice to the expression of disappointment which we feel in relation to the Final Stages of this piece of amending legislation. If it were a new Bill coming through the House dealing with an entirely new subject, we could possibly say that mistakes could be made which could at a later stage be remedied; but the original Act dealing with this subject has been in operation since 1948, and, while it was patently evident to everybody what the flaws were, it is just too bad that the amending legislation will reach the Final Stages with the position very little better in very many cases than it was under that Act.

I do agree—and we are glad of it— that in a number of ways the Bill has remedied some of the defects which arose in the 1948 Act. But it is the ones which have been overlooked, the glaring injustices which have not been covered by this Bill that we are worried about, the glaring injustices which have remained there because of the fact that you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and the Ceann Comhairle, ruled out of order amendments which would have brought about the desired effect. I am sure that the Minister would agree that some of the amendments were highly desirable and could have been brought into the Bill. It came as a surprise to us, as no doubt it came as a surprise to our colleagues across the way, to find to-day that these amendments were ruled out of order on the day when the Bill was coming up for consideration on this stage. While it is a bit too late to speak, I am appealing to the Minister to do something about it. Everybody will agree that numerous remedies for the defects which occurred in the previous Act — and which are recurring in the present Bill — could have been applied if they had been considered and considered properly.

The one thing that annoys me more than anything else is that almost through the whole of last summer a committee of our Party and, I am sure, a committee of other Parties, met again and again in order to bring some or all of these defects to the notice of the Minister. To find now, coming to the Final Stages of this Bill, that it is in many respects as bad a Bill as the 1948 one was, is surely most unsatisfactory.

One particular question which many of us feel could have been considered is the question of the amount of payment. While all sorts of cases were made, I think our case for a reduction in the amount is unanswerable. In any event, in looking over the Bill, we find that there are numerous defects which could have been remedied by a slight change in the wording of the Bill. This was suggested by us, and, even though the amendments were ruled out of order by the Ceann Comhairle, I am sure our amendments, at least, if not those of our opposite numbers, could have been included and taken advantage of.

Mr. McGrath

The only satisfaction to be gained from this Bill is that it remedied a situation in regard to the payment of contributions by certain sections of the workers of Cork Corporation. Though we are all aware, as are the Ministers concerned since 1948, that it was not the intention of the 1948 Act that those people should be asked to make contributions, on some legal quibble, when the manager appealed to the Supreme Court, that court decided that those people should continue to pay contributions because the manager had failed to keep a proper register. We must believe that it was through the failure of the city manager to keep a register that those people were compelled to pay the contributions.

We are glad this Bill has cleared up that position and that these men will be repaid the amount taken from them and will not have to contribute any more. However, as far as Cork City Deputies are concerned, that is all the satisfaction we will obtain from the Bill. We met the Minister in relation to several matters. We met him in regard to adding years of service in respect of local authority officials and servants who had given good service to this country and who, due to their activities, were not able to get into positions in the local authority until they were fairly advanced in years, and will not be in a position to secure full pension, or anything near full pension. We find the Minister will not agree to give those men at least ten years' added service which at one time they could have got. We are told that it is the responsibility of the Minister for Defence to look after the I.R.A. men of those years. I am not so innocent as to believe that the Minister cannot see the difficulties which the Minister for Defence would have in trying to do anything like that and I feel that the local authorities should be left in the position of being able to add up to ten years to their service. I think all the city Deputies were anxious about that.

There is another matter that other Deputies besides myself raised, namely, the position of pensioners who were pensioned when the £ was worth £1 and who are still on a very low rate of pension, a pension on which they could not exist if it were not for the help they get from other people. It is a very sad state of affairs that people who have given good service to local authorities should be left at the rate of pension they got in 1938 or at a rate very near that. I think there was one increase. I am sorry that the Minister did not take steps to remedy that position. I said on Second Reading that the Cork Harbour Commissioners, who have not to get departmental sanction, brought their pensions up to date and recently gave to their pensioners two-thirds of the increase of 14/6 that was given to the workers. They did the same for the clerical staff; they gave them two-thirds of whatever increase was given. If they were in the position that they required sanction from the Department their pensioners would still be on a rate of pension on which they could not possibly exist.

Like Deputy Desmond, Deputy Tully and Deputy Jack Lynch, I think this Bill falls very far short of what we all expected. It does one thing for which I am glad — it settles the question of Cork Corporation workers. That is about all this Bill does.

Mr. Casey

There is unanimity on all sides that this Bill can be deemed to be little more than a step in the right direction towards the provision of adequate and just superannuation rights and conditions for employees of local authorities. As my colleague Deputy Desmond said, we had a committee that put quite a lot of work into this Bill and that went on many deputations. It was rather discouraging that some of our main amendments were ruled out on a technicality, and if I may suggest, in one or two particular cases, a rather far-fetched technicality. While we have succeeded in some cases, through representations before the draft of the Bill came to the House, in having some improvements made in relation to the services of people whom we strive to represent here, we must be candid and say that the Bill in its final form represents very many disappointments for us.

As far as I am concerned, perhaps one of the greatest disappointments derives from the fact that, although this Superannuation Bill has been introduced, any county council or corporation, to-morrow morning, can decide not to implement it. We had hoped that the Minister would take his courage in his hands and say to all local authorities: "We, the Government of the country, feel that it is just and equitable that employees of local authorities should have a just and fair superannuation scheme." That has not been said. We have here a Bill that provides for some sort of superannuation but it is up to the local authority to implement it or not. Knowing some of the local authorities as we do, I am afraid that if their employees are depending on this Bill there will never be a pension scheme for very many of them.

While that is a grave disappointment, it must be a disappointment to everybody in the House that in the year 1956 Dáil Éireann is passing legislation which includes a strike clause. One would have imagined that we had advanced far enough in this country to deem it Gilbertian to put a section into the Bill which penalises officers of a local authority for standing up for their rights and taking whatever action their trade union decides.

As we are all aware, there was such a provision in the 1948 Act in relation to both servants and officers of the local authority. The Minister has taken this opportunity to delete this penal clause in relation to servants, but he has retained it in relation to officers. I am anxious to know why there should be discrimination against one section in this respect. I am tempted to suggest that it is because of the organised force of the servants and the strength of their trade unions that they had justice done to them and that because of the fact that officers of local authorities are not so well organised, they were dealt with in an unjust manner, a manner dissimilar to the manner in which servants were dealt with.

It is a very grave disappointment to me, personally, that in the year 1956 any Irish Government should pass legislation containing such a clause.

I feel that the Bill has very many more shortcomings, but, please God, we are young enough to look forward to another Local Government (Superannuation) Bill. I hope it will be introduced in the not too distant future and that these outstanding grievances will be remedied on that occasion.

Mr. O'Donnell

First of all, I should like to thank the House for the manner in which they have received this Bill. I should like also to thank the various deputations which I have met for the helpful advice they gave me before the various stages of the Bill reached the House. When I say deputations, I mean deputations including members of all sides of the House.

I hope, like other Deputies, that the Local Government (Superannuation) Bill, 1955, will not be the last Bill introduced in the House to give superannuation to employees of local authorities but it is, as Deputy Casey pointed out, a step forward. Let us remember that, since the inception of the State down to 1948, no effort was made to give superannuation to servants of local authorities. In 1925, shortly after the State was established, a Bill was passed through this House to give superannuation to officers of local authorities, but, from the passing of that Bill until 1948, no effort whatsoever was made to do anything for the servants. This Bill has been introduced to remedy some of the faults in the 1948 Act.

Some Deputies mentioned that we did not follow the pattern of the British system of superannuation in local authorities. Let me remind the House that, so far as the servants and officers of local authorities in Britain are concerned, only wholetime servants are superannuated. Unfortunately, in this country we cannot give wholetime employment to all the servants of local authorities but we go a good way towards making up for that when we provide for these 200 service days. If they have 200 service days in the year, they become automatically entitled to superannuation.

We are on the Final Stage of the Bill and I understand that we can discuss only what is in the Bill and not what is omitted from it but most of the speeches here this evening were addressed to omissions from the Bill, not to its contents, and it is but right that I should refer to them now in reply. Right through the entire discussion of this Bill and through the deputations which I have met, the principal points which were advanced were, first of all, that the contributions were too high; secondly, in certain cases that there be no contributions; and, thirdly, that years should be added to an officer's service in order to enable him to draw full superannuation. Has anyone thought of the impact on the taxpayers and ratepayers? No person seems to have thought of that. We did try to meet it in the case of Cork, where we must refund some rightful dues to the servants of the corporation. We tried to cushion the ratepayers of Cork against the impact of that £23,000 or £24,000 that must be repaid to the servants concerned. That is being done because of representations received from all sides of the House. I decided to leave it to themselves in Cork as to how they would refund the money.

We must think of the taxpayers and the ratepayers and it may be possible to review the Bill in a few years' time.

Deputies Casey and Desmond made reference to the fact that it is optional for the local authorities as to whether or not they will adopt a scheme of superannuation. I am very glad indeed that it is optional. I am proud of the fact that we are leaving to the authorities their own decision in this matter. After all, for far too long and for far too many years have we been dictators to local authorities in matters of local government, and it is only right we should leave it to them to decide whether or not they will adopt a scheme of superannuation. It is much better to leave it to the local authorities to say whether or not they can afford or wish to implement the Act. Of course, I sincerely hope every local authority will adopt a scheme and, if compulsion is necessary, and I hope it never will be, it may be possible to review the matter at a future date.

I do not think I should let the occasion pass without again paying tribute to my Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Davin, for the amount of work he put into the preliminary stages of the Bill. I am only sorry he is not in the House to see the Bill reach its Final Stage. I also owe thanks to the House for the manner in which the Bill was received. I wish to thank the various Deputies who came on deputations and gave me every assistance in the preparation of the Bill and for its expeditious passage through the House. If I could not meet them on every point, I hope I expressed myself in very simple language that they would understand.

Mr. Desmond

The omissions are neither the fault nor the pleasure of the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. O'Donnell

This is neither the time nor the place to discuss that.

Question put and agreed to.