I am still, I am afraid, in a very critical frame of mind with regard to this section, which is the main section of the Bill, and which sets out the rates of pension increase to be given to the various beneficiaries. It ranges from 15 per cent. down to 6 per cent. I made the point on the Second Stage that to give 15 per cent., which is the maximum amount given to a pensioner, in order to enable him to cope with a 34 per cent.—at the very least—rise in the cost of living in less than ten years, is to give in a very niggardly manner. On the other hand, to give 6 per cent. at the top of the scale is virtually not to give at all—it is an increase of only 9/8 a week.
I asked the Minister on the last occasion—and perhaps he may be prepared to deal with the point on this section—how many people would be covered by the first four clauses here (a), (b), (c) and (d), that is to say, how many of these 6,800 pensioners are at the moment getting pensions of less than £200 a year. I have no knowledge of that at all, and I have no way of guessing how many there may be, but I think it is a matter of interest to us to know how many of those pensioners, who are now to get a very small increase, are in fact existing on pensions of less than £200 a year. Be it noted that already some of them are existing on pensions of less than £100 a year. I find it very hard to satisfy myself that we are doing what we ought to do in relation to this matter by giving those with less than £100 a year a 15 per cent. increase and giving the others an even lower increase.
I should like to ask the Minister also what proportion of the total pension bill is represented by this increase. This section increases the amount expended for pensions by a total of something like £140,000 a year, as we were told by the Minister. I should like to know what proportion that £140,000 is of the total pensions bill; in other words, how much per cent. is being added to that bill by this additional £140,000?
I do not want to repeat what I said on the Second Stage about the cost-of-living figures. I should like to point out that many of these pensions referred to in this section, and referred to in some detail in the seven different categories, were calculated, naturally, upon the salaries and the years of service of the pensioners. If these salaries, upon which such calculations were based, relate to ten years ago, they relate to a period when, say, £500 a year would have been not a bad pension. In other words, these pensions were calculated upon salaries which in themselves related to a cost of living much lower than it is to-day. On behalf of those civil servants and others in a similar type of employment, who remained in service even for a few years after 1947, adjustments were made both in salaries and in the basis on which pensions were computed. I think I am right in saying that, in relation to teachers and departmental Inspectors, there was a change in the method of calculating their years of service. I understand that early years of service spent in teaching are now counted in the calculation of an inspector's pension. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong in that, but, as I understand it, that is a recent concession and has resulted in such recently retired servants getting considerably bigger pensions and gratuities than did their counterparts of a mere eight or nine years ago.
I do not at all suggest that these more recent pensioners have in any sense received lavish pensions or gratuities, but I do suggest that an injustice is being done when men in the same income and service group, pensionable servants of the State, are treated as if they had given entirely different service and done an entirely different level of work in the course of their actual employment. I shall give one example. Take the case of a divisional inspector with 43 years' service, 33 years as an inspector and ten years as a teacher. If he retired in December, 1946, he got a gratuity of £1,270 and a pension of £577. A similar officer, doing the same kind of work in the same category, with the same years of service—33 years as an inspector, ten years as a teacher—retiring after 15th January, 1951, gets not £1,270 as a gratuity but £2,051 and not £577 as a pension but £715. As I understand it, he too will be compensated under this Bill. Under Section 2 he will get an increased pension rate. One can see that the civil servant who retired earlier is under a severe disability by reason of the fact that (a) his rate of pension is lower and (b) his gratuity was calculated upon a different basis from that adopted in the case of the man who retired only five years later.
It is worth while comparing what the consolidated maximum salary was for such men. In 1946 it was £1,155; in November, 1948, it was £1,240; in January, 1951, when it was revised, it became £1,300 and the present scale, including the latest increase, makes it £1,431. The present pensioner has his pension based upon those new salary rates and the pensioner who retired since 1951 also has his pension based upon those rates, and will get, in addition, all these other concessions, such as they are, as laid down in Section 2, whereas the man who retired only a few years earlier gets no recognition under this section or in any other part of this Bill.
There are two other points I should like to make. First, it must be presumed in the nature of things now— we previously discussed at length the question of a widow's pension—that such a pensioner must be making some provision from his pension for his wife should she become a widow. I ask the Seanad to consider what kind of provision such a man is able to make out of a pension of £500 a year or out of a pension, as is the case of those in the first four of these seven clauses, of less than £200 a year. In considering the amount of money we are granting under this section, should we not bear in mind that we ought to be enabling these people to put aside adequate provision for their wives, should these pensioners predecease their wives?
The second point is that the Minister for Finance is rightly recognised in the Dáil, and here, as a person who faces facts fairly coldly. He presents them objectively. He was complimented in the Dáil the other day on the way in which he faced the fact in relation to the amount of money available for housing. I should like to ask him now to place himself for a moment in the position of a person trying to live on a pension of 35/- a week, a retired servant of the State. I should like him, as coldly as he can, to face the fact of a pensioner, perhaps a married pensioner whose wife is still living, trying to face the world on a pension of even £3 per week, to take the third of these categories here. I would ask him whether he really thinks that a pensioner receiving £150 a year for himself and his wife, even with the 12 per cent. increase envisaged in paragraph (c), will be able to face the cold facts of the modern cost of living when, if we face those facts coldly here, we recognise that even since 1947 there has been an increase in the cost of living not of 12 per cent. but of 34 per cent.
I would urge upon the Minister therefore, that, even at this late hour, he should modify the provisions of this section in order to give more generous consideration to those retired servants of the State who have got no effective weapon, except the weapon of persuasion, with which to enforce their claim. We recognise that as far as a Money Bill is concerned we are quite powerless in this House. If we wanted to give more money to such pensioners, it would have no effect, even should we pass an amendment asking that more money be made available under this section, because such an amendment would in itself be out of order under our Standing Orders and could not therefore even be proposed and discussed, much less passed. In view of that, I am putting the view, with which I hope many Senators will agree, and I appeal to the Minister to recognise, that even with all the austerity that is talked about and is necessary in any field, we are not doing enough for these pensioners in giving them from 6 to 15 per cent. increases with such a time-lag, and based upon pensions which, in turn, were based upon salaries which were considerably below the present salaries related to present pension rights.