The purpose of the Bill is to enable persons whose property may have been damaged or who may have sustained losses due to damage to property from the period on or after 24th April, 1916, up to 12th May, 1923, and who, for one reason or another have been excluded from the scope of the existing Damage to Property (Compensation) Acts. I shall deal with Section 2 first, as it covers most of the matters concerned. It will be seen that Section 2 (1) (a) states:
"All injuries to property, being a building or chattels in or about a building, which occurred in Saorstát Eireann on or after the 24th day of April, 1916, and before the 21st day of January, 1919, and which were occasioned by acts of the British military or police authorities (whether such authorities were or were not acting or purporting to act under martial law) and which were sustained in one or other of the following circumstances, that is to say, while such building was being defended in arms by any person ordinarily resident therein against such authorities or while any such person was under arrest or was endeavouring to resist arrest by such authorities."
That is an extension of the existing law. It covers a period which has not been dealt with hitherto under Damage to Property (Compensation) Acts prior to the proclamation of the First Dáil and subsequent to the outbreak of the insurrection in 1916. It will cover also any losses that may have been sustained in the circumstances covered by the section during the anti-conscription period and during the period before the resistance to the British régime was regularised by the constitution of the Dáil. It is rather remarkable that that period, which was very significant, has hitherto not been dealt with by the Damage to Property (Compensation) Acts, and it was felt that, as this Bill, so to speak, was winding up and liquidating all claims and amending very serious deficiencies in the existing law, that period should also be dealt with.
The remaining parts of the section deal with all the injuries to property which occurred between 21st January, 1919, and 11th July, 1921, in respect of which either no claim was made to the Damage to Property (Compensation) (Ireland) Commission or a claim was made but was not determined by that Commission. That covers the case of those people who, for conscientious reasons, subsequent to the Treaty of 1921, feeling that being opposed to the Treaty they should not take advantage of any of the machinery set up under it, failed to claim. It is felt with regard to them that, as so much water has flowed under the bridge since and as a considerable change has taken place in public opinion in regard to the position, these people should be given an opportunity now to make a claim which they may have felt themselves precluded from making in the critical period when the Compensation (Ireland) Commission was sitting.
Paragraph (c) of the sub-section might be described as the originating section. It proposes to remove disabilities which were imposed upon Republicans by the Principal Act, the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act, 1923. Possibly members of the present Seanad are not aware of it, but under the Act of 1923 there was one very serious defect. A person suspected—and it never went beyond suspicion—of complicity with the forces which were ranged against the Provisional Government at the time, and subsequently against the forces of Saorstát Eireann, in cases where reports were made for compensation by the county court judge at the time, and where decrees were not awarded the Minister could simply refuse to honour the report or to act on it in any way. In the other cases, where the attention of the court was drawn to the terms of Section 9 the county court judge, if satisfied with the evidence, would have no option but to refuse compensation, no matter in what circumstances the property was destroyed. The general purpose of this Bill is to remove these disabilities and to enable compensation to be given in a number of cases where court decrees had already been made, or where awards were refused because of one or other of the sections referred to, or where the Minister for Finance, having received the report of the county court judge, had refused to act upon it.
The general method of procedure will be exactly the same as in the Principal Act of 1923. That is to say, a person will have to apply to the court; the case will be heard in the Circuit Court and there will be an opportunity there for both parties, the applicant on the one side and the Minister for Finance on the other side, to produce witnesses either to prove or to refute the claim. There is no substantial departure from the procedure of the existing Act in any way, but there are a couple of modifications. For instance, under Section 11 power is taken, with reservations, to meet particular cases of hardship.
"(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other Act, and except where a reinstatement condition is attached to the decree and no part of such reinstatement condition was complied with before the passing of this Act, no payment shall be made after the 30th day of September, 1934, in respect of any compensation awarded by a decree made under the Principal Act..."
The purpose of that is to enforce the reinstatement condition. A number of decrees were granted many years back with a reinstatement condition attached. No attempt has been made on the part of some of those who received the awards to comply with that condition. The Minister for Finance can neither disburse the money to them nor appropriate it to any other purpose. It is proposed in the circumstances set out in a subsequent sub-section, to compel them to rebuild before the 30th September, 1936, or else to forfeit the award made under the Principal Act. There are a few exceptions. One is the case of a person who is not actually in possession, but who will be next in possession when the present beneficiary dies, who would be quite willing to rebuild if he were in possession. Others are where, for one reason or another, due to age or some other frailty, the existing holders are unwilling to build and cannot be compelled to do so. In that case in sub-section (2) we make special provision to meet it. That is to say, in the case of a person to whom compensation was awarded who dies after the passing of this Act and before the 1st day of July, 1936,
"no payment shall be made after the expiration of three years after the death of such person,"
and in case he dies after the 30th June, 1936; and
"any son or daughter of such person has before the 1st day of July, 1936, agreed in writing with the Minister that, in the event of his or her becoming entitled on the death of such person to the land on which was situate the premises in respect of which such compensation was awarded, he or she will, within a period of three years after the death of such person, completely comply with such reinstatement condition,"
then in either of these two cases the provision as to forfeiture does not apply.
Section 12 deals with cases which have arisen, one comparatively recently, where compensation has been paid, and some of the chattels in respect of which compensation was given are subsequently found, and become the property of the Minister for Finance, who will be bound to offer them for purchase to the person to whom compensation was originally ordered. If they are not sold at an agreed price, then the Minister for Finance has power to dispose of them in the open market, and, I suppose, the beneficiary might buy them for whatever they fetch. These are the only proposals in the Bill. I need not detain the Seanad by dwelling upon them at length.
