While we are waiting for the Minister for Justice, would the Minister for Finance be able to tell me this: we have handed him a considerable number of Supplementary Estimates this year and is it fair to ask him will the buoyancy of the revenue clear them?
Committee on Finance. - Vote 24—Garda Síochána.
If the Deputy is asking me whether the buoyancy would carry them for this financial year, I am afraid not, but I could not give him the final figure yet.
I move:—
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £70,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1962, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Garda Síochána including Pensions, etc. (9 & 10 Geo. 5, c. 68; No. 25 of 1924; No. 7 of 1925; No. 10 of 1926; No. 32 of 1933; No. 5 of 1937; No. 19 of 1941; Nos. 1 and 17 of 1945; No. 41 of 1947; No. 44 of 1956; and No. 43 of 1959) and for payments of compensation and other expenses arising out of service in the Local Security Force (No. 19 of 1946 and No. 15 of 1949).
This Supplementary Estimate is the necessary result of increases during the year in the rates of pay of the Garda Síochána. A sum of £131,000 is needed to meet the cost of the pay award, granted with effect from 1st November, 1961, which followed the acceptance by the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Finance of an agreed recommendation of the Garda Conciliation Council on a claim for pay increases. A further charge on Subhead A is due to a change in wastage trends since the time the original Estimate was prepared. The trends then indicated a fairly high incidence of resignations in the voluntary retirement group, that is, those members who, having reached 50 years of age and having served in the Force for 30 years, are entitled to retire and receive a pension.
As things turned out, however, there was a marked falling-off in the number of retirements among those who could leave on pension before reaching the age limit and, as a consequence, Garda strength on maximum rate of pay has, since the beginning of the year, been substantially in excess of the number for whom the top pay rate was provided. This deficit in the pay subhead is however offset by the savings in the pensions subhead resulting from the drop in expected pensionable retirements. Other expenditure during the year which was in excess of estimated requirements related to telephone charges, locomotion and travelling expenses. Altogether the total additional sum required is £210,977 but savings on other subheads and a surplus in the receipts which are appropriated in aid of the Vote have contributed to reducing the total to a net sum of £70,000.
The Minister was a little delayed this morning and we must make allowances for that, but I want to put on record the Standing Orders of the House which prohibit the reading of statements by any member of the House. If it is the Minister's wish to read a statement, there is a reciprocal obligation upon him to provide the Opposition members with copies of the statement. I would urge that this reciprocal obligation be met; otherwise we must object to what I regard as a reasonable request of Ministers to be permitted to read their introductory statements.
There is nothing controversial that I can find in the details of the Estimate, except that I am not clear in my mind how the payments out of the Road Fund in respect of payments to the Garda Síochána could be so underestimated at the beginning of the year by such a large sum as £44,000.
The payment from the Road Fund is approximately one and a half per cent of the Fund. During the year, the Minister for Finance agreed that, in addition to that, all fines collected would be paid over in aid of the Road Fund.
Would the Minister be good enough to tell us what the details of the pay awards were? We have just had a global figure and we have no idea what increases they have got since 1st November.
These figures are fully set out in the current Book of Estimates. It states exactly what each rank in the Garda gets.
That includes the last increase?
It includes the award which became effective from November 1st. Roughly speaking, a recruit leaving the depot after training got £9 19s. a week and so on up to approximately £14 a week, which is the maximum. That award became effective from 1st November and the cost from that date to 31st March is £131,000.
If that is so, what the Minister says is not correct. He says that a Garda leaving the depot gets £9 19s. a week but according to the Book of Estimates, the Garda leaving the depot gets 175s.
That is when he is in the depot, when he is being trained.
He gets 199s. when he is leaving and that increases to 288s.?
That is so.
Vote put and agreed to.