This Bill is in nearly all respects the counterpart in relation to widows' and orphans' pensions, of the National Health Insurance Bill and follows the same pattern.
Part II re-enacts, with certain minor modifications, the provisions of Emergency Powers (No. 382) Order, 1946, made on 14th June last. The Part consists of only four sections. The first of these sections, Section 4, makes in relation to excepted persons provision similar to that made in Section 3 of the National Health Insurance Bill in relation to persons insured under the National Health Insurance Acts. Broadly speaking, excepted persons are non-manual employees of the State, local authorities and certain statutory companies earning less than £250 a year, and the section provides that in their case, where sums purporting to be contributions under the Pensions Acts have been paid in good faith after the person has ceased to be insurable under the Acts, such sums will be accepted as contributions and confer on the person concerned the same rights in regard to insurance as if they were, in fact, contributions. The next section extends the "free" insurance period in the case of excepted persons from 12 to 18 months, as in the case of persons insured under the National Health Insurance Acts. Section 6 deals with the insurance of soldiers. Section 7 relates to persons who left or may leave this country on or after the 3rd September, 1939, and who die or return before a date to be fixed by the Minister, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, and provides that, if certain conditions are satisfied in relation to contributions under the Pensions Acts before such persons left the State, the period of their absence will be disregarded for the purpose of determining their qualifications for pension purposes. In that way, a man who went, say, to Great Britain during the emergency to work there, and who died before he acquired rights under the British Widows' Pensions Acts, will have his Irish pensions insurance safeguarded. The number of cases involved is not, and is not likely to be, large, but the section removes grave hardship in certain cases.
Part III of the Bill contains only one section, Section 8, which extends the power of the Minister for Finance in the matter of investment of funds held by him for the pensions investment account to include all securities for which the trustees are for the time being authorised by law to invest trust funds.
