The principal purpose of this Bill will be found in Section 3, which is designed to remove doubts in regard to the application of Part IV of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act of 1938 and to extend its scope in order that certain former Ministers of the First Dáil Eireann, or their widows, may be eligible to receive pensions. As well as this, Section 4 of the Bill, as amended in the Committee Stage in the Dáil, will have the effect of rendering eligible for pension widows of persons who have held, during any period since 1919, ministerial or secretarial office for a period of less than three years and who have hitherto for this reason been ineligble for widows' pensions under the terms of the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Acts.
The Act of 1938 was enacted following the report, dated 24th November, 1937, of a committee of inquiry into ministerial and other salaries which had been appointed in 1937. This committee recommended, inter alia, that Ministers of State should be made eligible to receive pensions and that service as Minister prior to 6th December, 1922, whether under Dáil Eireann or under the Provisional Government, should be reckonable for pension purposes.
When the Act was passed and its application came to be considered with a view to determining eligibility for pensions, a doubt arose as to whether the office of Director under the First Dáil could be a ministerial office only if it was an office as member of the Cabinet or the office of Chairman. There was a provision in Section 18 of the Act for the reference of any questions arising as to the holding of ministerial office before 6th December, 1922, to a committee consisting of the Taoiseach, or some person nominated by him, the Leader of the second Party or some person nominated by him, and the Chairman of Dáil Éireann or some person nominated by him. An application did come before that committee in respect of services as Directors, but no record exists of a report by the committee, and I am making bold to presume that the reason why no report was submitted was because the committee felt quite clearly while it was the spirit and intention of the Act that the office of Director should be covered, the letter of the law, on the other hand, forbade them to make a report to that effect.
None the less, the fact remains that no report exists, and however inconsistent it may be, I, who have had most intimate association with the drafting and submission of the 1938 Act to the Oireachtas, am not satisfied that ineligibility for pension could have been established beyond doubt. That a Director should be eligible for a pension was clearly in the mind of the Government of the day. It was, in fact, mentioned by me in this House that the office of Director, being a ministerial head of a Department under the First Dáil, and existing from 2nd April, 1919, to 26th August, 1921, would be covered by the terms of the Act.
It is clear from the records in my Department why the service of the Director was intended to be covered by the 1938 Act. Dáil Éireann has agreed with the Government that it would be invidious to exclude such service and, accordingly, provision for the removal of the doubts which have existed, and the correction of the really anomalous position hitherto prevailing, is included in Section 3 of this Bill. If the Cabinet of the First Dáil had been constituted on the basis which now exists, whereby all Ministers, members of the Cabinet, receive pensions, this difficulty would not have arisen.
Provision is made in Section 2 to enable any period between the nomination of the person in ministerial office and the ratification of such an office by the Dáil to be regarded as pensionable service. In normal times there would be little or no interval between the nomination of such persons and the submission of their names to the Dáil for ratification, but in the circumstances such as existed from 1919 to 1922, it was not possible to hold a meeting of the First Dáil, and in some cases the Minister was placed in charge of a Department several months before the meeting took place at which ratification of appointment could be sought. During this interval, however, those Ministers were exposed to all the risks associated with their office.
Once again, on the strict interpretation of the legal position and the Article of the Constitution of the First Dáil, these Ministers could not be regarded as having held ministerial office for a pensionable period within the meaning of the Act, and in order to render this service reckonable, Section 2 has been drafted.
The 1938 Act provided that a minimum of three years' service should be required to qualify for pensions in respect of ministerial office, service prior to the Truce of 11th July, 1921, being reckoned in double measure for this purpose. The amending Act of 1949, however, provided that if a Minister died in office, a pension might be awarded to his widow, even if he had not completed three years' service. We think that that principle—and Dáil Éireann has agreed with the Government in this matter—should be further extended, and provision is being made in this Bill to enable a pension to be awarded to the widow of a person who held qualifying office at any period, but who did not die in office, even though such person's service might not have amounted to three years.
I think the justification for this course will be patent to all members of the Seanad. As we know, when a person accepts ministerial office, or as, in some cases, has ministerial office thrust upon him, he has naturally to make a break with his former career. If he is a director of public companies or even of private companies, he has to resign his directorships. If he has been carrying on a business, the probabilities are that his business, lacking his own personal attention and direction, will suffer very severely, and therefore persons who accept ministerial and parliamentary offices are subject to disabilities and disadvantages which very often are visited, as we know from personal experience, upon their wives and children and, after their death, upon their widows. The provision which the Government proposes to make in this Bill is, I think, of the most modest that would be justifiable. We merely make provision to ensure that, when a person who has held a ministerial or parliamentary office dies, his widow will be safeguarded against extreme penury, and that is the justification for the course we are taking under Section 4. I commend the Bill to the Seanad and I should very greatly appreciate it if the Seanad would be good enough to let me have all stages this evening.
