(Cavan): I move:
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that in view of the steep rise in the cost of living and the difficulties created thereby for all pensioners, all pensions should be increased.
That, Sir, is an all-embracing motion. It is, in my respectful submission, no more than is necessary. It is a motion which calls on the Government to recognise the fact that the cost of living has increased substantially and, as a result, severe hardships have been inflicted on all categories of pensioners. I am appealing to the Minister and the Government to do justice to all grades of pensioners. In that, I include old age pensioners, widows, retired local government employees, retired civil servants, retired members of the Garda Síochana and all other categories of State and semi-State pensioners. It is unnecessary for me to labour the argument or to emphasise the fact that the cost of living has increased very substantially.
I propose to deal with this motion in a general way because other speakers following me will deal with each of the categories involved more specifically. However, I should like to say a word about old age pensioners in the first instance. The maximum rate of pension payable to an old age pensioner at the present time is 47/6d per week and that has been so now for over 12 months. It does not need any great eloquence or argument to convince the country, or certainly Deputies, that that is a totally inadequate sum on which to expect an old person to live. We should, in this country, be just to people who can no longer fend for themselves, to people who can no longer go on strike, who can no longer march in order to put their claims before the Government and the Minister concerned.
I notice that a new means test has been introduced into the old age pension code. Up to about 12 months ago a person could have £52 a year approximately and qualify for the full old age pension. In the Budget of last year, I think, a new means test was introduced whereby people who had more than £26 a year did not qualify for the maximum payment of 47/6d per week, but in the Social Welfare Act of this year, we had yet another means test introduced. When the last 5/- a week was given, it was stipulated that it would become payable only to people who were destitute, people who had no income whatsoever; even a right of residence disqualified a person from receiving this latest increase of 5/-. That was an unfortunate provision to put into the Social Welfare Act of this year, because I think people should not be discouraged from making some provision for themselves, such as retaining a right of residence in the house which they transfer to another member of the family. I shall deal with this only in a general way and I want to leave the old age pensioners and the widows on the note that the present pensions are really a disgrace to this country in this year of 1966.
State servants, in general, and local government employees who retire have the same grievance. The pensions they receive bear no relation at all to the salaries for the time being paid to their successors in office, and the pensions they receive very often bear no relation to the cost of living. I have held, and held for a very long time, that the pension being paid to a retired civil servant or local government employee should be tied, and tied rather rigidly, to the salary being paid to the successor in office; that is no more than reasonable. I understand that local government pensioners have received an increase which is supposed to bring them up in line with the ninth round, to compensate them for the ninth round increase. In fact, it does not do any such thing. It ignores certain increases which serving officers received subsequent to the seventh round. It ignores the status increases of which the Minister is well aware. This means that those local authority employees who retired, I think, after 1963 are in a very poor position indeed, and feel that they have a genuine grievance. It always puzzled me why the pensions of retired local government employees and civil servants were not related to the salaries paid to their successors in office. It is very hard to justify their not being so related.
Members of the Garda who have retired are also dissatisfied with the treatment which they received, and with the pensions which they are being paid. I think it is a fact that there are six different rates of pensions being paid to the same grade in the Garda. Admittedly, they retired at different times, but it is an extraordinary thing that six different rates of pensions should be paid to the same grade within the Garda Síochána. When these men joined the Force, they were led to believe that they would have a guaranteed standard of living, a reasonable standard of living. Of course, so long as they remained members of the Garda Síochána, their organisations fought for them, and were in a position to agitate for them, and see to it that they were properly treated. A man who joins the Garda should be guaranteed not only a reasonable standard of living while he is serving in the Force, but a reasonable standard of living when he retires and can no longer earn a living for himself.
I understand that the Garda alone among all the State servants contribute to their pensions. I think they pay something approximating to 2½ per cent of their salaries towards a pension fund. I understand that no other branch of the Civil Service so contribute to their pension fund. That is all the more reason why they should be properly treated by the Government and by the Department. The same thing applies to local government officials who retire. They find themselves, comparatively speaking, much worse off than their serving brethren.
Another thing that strikes me as being unfair to retired people is that many of them invest, and have invested in the past, in national loans, believing they would have some security in that way, but of course they find that what looked like a reasonable rate of interest when they invested their money, and what looked like a reasonable income, means very little at the present time because the value of money has been substantially reduced. At the same time, if they are within the income bracket, they have to pay income tax. Those are the better off pensioners. As I say, while their capital is being reduced if invested in national loans, at the same time they are called upon to pay income tax.
It is really difficult to understand the general approach of the Government, and of various Ministers of State individually, to this problem of pensions. They do something, but they do it belatedly, and they do too little. The system of giving pensioners something now and again in the Budget is quite unsatisfactory. Usually when the Minister has dealt with everything else in the Budget, he sees if he has anything left, or if he can scrape a bit from some other place, and he throws it at the pensioners. The amounts provided in this way in different Budgets by previous Ministers for Finance, year in and year out, have borne no relationship at all to the amounts being paid to the pensioners' successors in office. More important still, they bear no relationship to the cost of living.
The question of the superannuation paid to retired civil servants and local government employees should be tackled on a realistic basis, and should be put on a proper footing once and for all. It should be ensured that a person who during his working years received a reasonably good salary, and was able to keep up a fairly good standard of living, is not reduced to the position of a second- or third-class citizen when he retires, and is not thrown on the scrapheap, while those who are still in harness are well enough looked after because they are in a position to fight and because they have the machinery at their disposal to arbitrate for them and see that justice is done.
I do not think it is good enough— it is deplorable and unchristian—that people who have ceased to perform a useful service, so to speak, should be forgotten and treated as something that does not matter. I appeal to the Minister for Finance, who, I suppose, is the youngest man to hold that office for some time, who after all is the man in charge of the provision of pensions on an overall basis, the man who at Budget time is charged with providing the money, to bring to bear a new line of thinking on this subject and to be big enough and bold enough to say to the Government that they must provide the wherewithal to look after those who are not able to look after themselves. If the Minister approaches the subject in that way, he will have the full support of this side of the House in any proposals he brings here to do justice to retired State servants and retired local government employees. If the Minister is approached by the Minister for Social Welfare to provide money to help the still weaker section of the community, the weakest section, the old age pensioners and the widows and orphans who are utterly unable to provide for themselves and who must exist on charity—that is not the proper word because it should not be charity—who must call on the stronger sections of the community to look after them, the Minister should not be afraid to do so. I can assure him that he will have the support of this Party in providing money for that purpose.