I am opposed to this Bill and to the increases because I believe the time is not now opportune. This Bill comes at a very inappropriate time, at a time when, as we all know, we have a falling population, high emigration and unemployment, and a huge balance of payments problem, with a consequent urgent need for stability and lower prices if we are to achieve greater exports—which we all hope for—and pay our way. There is very little justification for increases ranging from £175 per annum to £485 per annum. I believe that will interfere with the stability which we need at the present time, and with the stability at which, in my opinion, we had arrived.
I think it will be agreed by everybody that the granting of these increases will spur every other section of the community to demand increases immediately. If we in this House are prepared to grant increases, and sanction increases, amounting to £10 per week to people who already have over £95 per week, how can the Government or any of us fail to answer the demands of the old age pensioners, the widows and orphans and other sections of the community? We all realise that 70 per cent of the workers in this country have less than £10 per week and 50 per cent of the workers have less than £6 per week. It should be the duty of any Government to govern in the interests of the greatest number of people in the community. I do not believe it is right that we should have one law for the rich and another law for the poor because the cost of living affects all people equally. If we believe an increase of 2/6 per week is enough to cover the increase in the cost of living for the old age pensioners and that 10/- per week is enough for other sections of the community, if we give the increases proposed in this Bill we cannot claim that we are being just to the lower paid categories. God be with the days when we were told in this country that no man was worth more, or should be paid more, than £1,000 per year.
Senators have spoken here to-day of the setting up of a Select Committee to go into this question. We all know that, in 1953, a Select Committee of Dáil Éireann, representative of the Government and the Opposition, considered a memorandum submitted by the judges of the Supreme Court, the High Court and the Circuit Court. There were submissions by the district justices on their claim for an increase in salary. It might be no harm to say, in passing, that the only time they can be got together is when there is a discussion of an increase in their own salaries. They can never be got together to discuss uniformity in sentences, the Probation Act, or the crime wave.
As a result of the recommendations of that Select Committee, the Government of the day decided to increase substantially the salaries of all members of the Judiciary. They got an increase in salary ranging from £250 per annum to £450 per annum. That was in 1953. I should like to point out to the Minister that the memorandum submitted by the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Court stated:
We wish to make it plain that we do not claim any right to have our salaries increased from time to time on account of any temporary increase in the cost of living, whether reckoned by reference to the index figure or otherwise.
That statement was made in the memorandum submitted by those learned and responsible gentlemen. Surely if they made a statement like that in support of their claims in 1953, it is not unreasonable to ask why they are looking for this increase and why it is being made retrospective to 1st January, 1959. It is being made retrospective for these people who are reasonably well off but when the increase was given in the Budget to the old age pensioners of 2/6 per week— 1/80th of what one gentleman is getting in this case—it could not be paid and they had to wait for four months, until September, to get the increase.
Senator Sheehy Skeffington referred to the fact that Fine Gael or the inter-Party Government did not give a brass farthing and claimed that one of the increases was given in 1947 and the other in 1953. It might be no harm to point out that there was a change of Government in 1948 and another in 1953. The judges pointed out themselves in 1953 that they did not want an increase every time the cost of living increased.