I join with other Senators in welcoming the provisions of this Bill, limited though they are. Basically, the Minister is giving legislative form to the proposals made by the Minister for Finance in his Budget speech this year. It was not wholly unexpected at that time. This is a Bill to enable the widows of Old IRA pensioners to get the equivalent of what was given some 18 months ago to the widows of established members of the Civil Service and subsequently members of the local authority service by way of ex gratia payments. In this case, the Minister saw fit to give legislative form to the proposals. It might have been better if those earlier ex gratia payments were made also by way of legislation.
I do not know if the House should go overboard in their gratitude for the implementation of this very fair provision. It is enough for us to say that we are grateful that it is being done at this stage. As many Members from both sides of the House have said, we have, over the years, a pretty shameful record in the way in which we recognised our IRA veterans, in the amount of money paid to them and in the way the State treated them generally. I am sure the Minister would be able to tell us that the IRA pensions have been increased by over 100 per cent in the last ten years. Everyone will accept that, while recognising the fact that in the last ten years, due to age, the numbers of IRA pensioners must be decreasing. We are thus dealing with an ever diminishing number. In the equivalent pensions which this Bill seeks to grant to the widows of IRA pensioners, we are again dealing with a decreasing number. Time is taking its toll and they will decrease every year.
I wonder how grateful we should feel for the granting of a minimum pension of £52.20 per annum to the widow of somebody who has rendered service to his country? This is a fraction of a penny over £1 per week. The Minister may say that there are IRA pensioners who are receiving less than that figure but if I were a Minister for Defence, I would feel so ashamed of that fact that I would not mention it by way of reply or rebut. It is a good thing that in the Bill the Minister has decided to ensure that the widow of any pensioner would get a minimum of £1 per week even if half of her deceased husband's pension amounted to less than that.
The widows of civil servants who received the ex gratia payment of the equivalent of half of what would have been their deceased husbands' pensions, have, since getting that concession, been pressing the Minister for Finance to increase their 50 per cent ex gratia payment and to endeavour over as short a number of years as possible to bring that ex gratia payment up to parity with what would have been their husbands' pensions were they still alive. I should hope that the Minister for Defence would think along similar lines and that, while this Bill is designed to give to the widows half their husbands' pensions, he would anticipate increasing that half as soon as possible, in a short number of stages, to bring to parity the payments being made to those widows. The cost of bringing this pension up to par during the next five years would not involve a large amount of money.
Should the Minister for Finance decide to increase by 10 or 15 per cent the ex gratia payments being made to the widows of civil servants, he may do so by an announcement in the course of a Budget speech. But if the Minister for Defence wants to make an equivalent increase at a later date in the pensions being paid to IRA or Connaught Rangers widows, he will have to come before the Houses of the Oireachtas with an amending Bill. We all know Ministers are more loath to change something when it involves not merely the change itself but also the changing of legislation already enacted.
I hope when the Minister is replying to the Second Reading of this debate he will outline his views on this and tell us whether he expects that there will be an attempt made to raise the payments being made to the widows so that they will be more than 50 per cent of what their husbands would have been entitled to, and how soon he thinks that may happen and in what way he would anticipate its being implemented.
Senators from both sides of the House have spoken about the particular exclusions from this Bill, not, I would venture to suggest, deliberate exclusions or people whom the Minister felt were not entitled to the pension but who, through the inaction of their deceased husbands in not applying for the military service pension or special allowance, are not entitled to receive anything under this Bill.
I am referring basically to two categories of IRA veterans. The first were men who for reasons of pride, their own financial wellbeing or stability at the time, chose not to apply for a military service pension under the Acts of 1924 or 1934, although they would have been entitled to such a pension had they so applied. The second category are those who would have been entitled to a pension had they applied but did not do so up to the year 1955. After 1955 the panel for assessing whether military service pensions ought or ought not to be granted was wound up. From then on anybody who had not applied could apply for and, perhaps, be given, a special allowance. If the second category of person did not apply for either a military service pension or a special allowance his wife will discover now, because of the failure of her husband to apply, that she will not be eligible for any payment under this Bill.
The situation can arise — I am sure many Members of the House have come across it—where somebody who had performed sterling service for the country in that troubled period up to the Treaty did not, because he did not agree with the terms of the Treaty, feel like applying for a military service pension. They, until recently, would have been described as the diehard republicans. I am sure the Minister is aware that there are so many people of varying categories now claiming to have the God given rights on that particular term that one finds it somewhat difficult to know how best to describe these men. Perhaps the best way to describe them is to state that they were men who performed a very definite service for this country, who did not agree with the actions of their colleagues afterwards and who in no way tried to profit or prosper from the subsequent events. In many cases they found themselves in severe financial hardship and straitened circumstances because of their pride in clinging to their ideals.
It must be rather galling for a wife who saw her husband go through 50 years of hardship and privation, who watched his pride refuse to melt away, who saw him nail his colours to the mast right to the end at the expense of himself and his family, who saw him interred, to then see a group of men who, in fairness I think it can be said, have prospered and done well now at this late stage turn around and don the mantle of "greener than green" re-publicianism, touring the country proclaiming their ideas with all the trappings of luxury and wealth attached to them. At the same time, the widow of that other man discovers that she is not even entitled to £52.20, £1.20 or even 20 new pence per annum because of her husband's pride.
The Minister ought to have made a definite effort to have included the widow of such a person in this scheme. I would suggest to the House that it would have been easy for a Parliamentary draftsman to add a further subsection to section 1 stating that:
The Minister may grant to a widow at his discretion a pension equivalent to the pension she would have been entitled to under subsection (1) had, in the opinion of the Minister, her husband qualified for a military service pension under the 1924 or 1934 Acts had he so applied.
That subsection added to section 1 would have given discretionary power to the Minister for Defence to cover the situation which has been dealt with by many Senators on each side of the House and has been dealt with in the other House by Deputies from all sides. I know that the Minister before this Bill left the other House was asked to give special attention to this before the Bill came before the Seanad. I do not know what attention the Minister has given to it but, unfortunately, the Bill has arrived in the Seanad in the virgin state in which it entered and left the Dáil.
It would have been a very easy and simple operation on the Minister's part. The Opposition find themselves somewhat inhibited because if such amendments were to be proposed by an Opposition or Private Member they would almost invariably be ruled out of order as involving a charge on State funds. I hope the Minister might even at this late stage in the Seanad consider introducing an amendment which would give to him the discretionary power to grant an equivalent ex gratia payment to the widow of a person who would have been entitled to a military service pension had he so applied but who for reasons of his own decided he would not do so.
In his reply to the Second Stage debate I should like the Minister to tell us what he envisaged were the difficulties in granting to the widows of Army service pensioners under the Acts of 1924 or 1934 or under the Connaught Rangers (Pensions) Act, 1936 the concession which was enjoyed by their husbands of free travel on the public transport services. If the State felt that a man was entitled to a pension, while he was alive and was entitled to free travel and his wife if she accompanied him was also so entitled and that when the man dies his wife because she is the wife of an IRA pensioner, is entitled to half of that pension, then the logical conclusion is that the wife must be entitled to half free travel. If the Minister feels that a wife is entitled to half her husband's pension surely she should be given a reduced fare. I do not believe, and I do not think the Minister believes, that it would cost the State very much to allow all of the widows free transport.
There is a second point which it is fair enough to bring up at this stage. A person who is in receipt of a military service pension at the moment has free transport facilities. If his wife accompanies him she too is entitled to travel free. In the event of the wife of the pensioner going out on a journey on her own she is not then entitled to the free transport which she would be entitled to if her husband were with her. I am not married so I do not understand many of the advantages or disadvantages attached to that, but I would imagine that there are many married Members of the House here who could think of many occasions when they feel like going somewhere and would not particularly feel like going out with their wives.
There are certain occasions when the wife might feel like going somewhere which would be the last place her husband would be inclined to go. It is rather galling for a military service pensioner who has done his duty for the country to have to hike himself off three or four miles to a bingo session and back again simply and solely to ensure that his wife gets free transport on the bus there and back.
While that situation may be regarded as facetious, men who qualify for military service pensions under these Acts would invariably at this stage be men of a fairly advanced age. Many of them, thank God, are very active men. But there are a number who are not only inactive and not in full physical or mental health but who are confined to bed for long periods or all the time and who very often are confined to bed not in the comfort of their own homes but in a nursing home, a geriatric home or a hospital sometimes very far away from their homes.
Here we have a situation where an IRA pensioner is in hospital as a geriatric patient or physically disabled and because of that disablement or illness he probably has not earned very much for the last few years. Indeed, if it is a disablement of long standing, as quite often is in the case of these IRA pensioners, he may not have earned very much for a number of years and the family may be in financial suffering and deprivation. While that man is in hospital his wife will wish to visit him but she will have to pay the cost of public transport which will take her from her house to the hospital and back again because her husband, who is entitled to free travel, is not with her. I would ask the House if there is anybody here who can see the logic in a situation such as that. I again respectfully ask the Minister to consider extending this free travel facility to the wives of military service pensioners under the 1924 and 1934 Acts, whether or not they are accompanied by their husbands, and to further extend it to the type of person who is covered by this Bill, in other words, to extend the free travel facility to the widow of a military service pensioner.
The Minister has given us the minimum pension payment which will be made to a widow but we have not heard what the maximum will be, whether the Minister envisages that the majority will be more towards the lower or the higher end of the scale or what the Minister envisages the average pension payment to these widows might be. It might be useful also if we were in a position to know how many military service pensioners there are under the two Acts, how many Connaught Rangers pensioners there are under the two Acts and how many widows there are of military service pensioners and Connaught Rangers pensioners under the three Acts. What would be the cost of extending free travel facilities to the widows and how much would the cost of extending free travel facilities to the wives and widows be? It is normal enough in these days, when a Bill such as this is placed before either House, for the explanatory memorandum accompanying it to outline in fair detail figures such as this; but unfortunately both the Minister's speech and the explanatory memorandum fall a little short of the statistical information, which Members of both Houses invariably look for and inevitably find very useful in assessing the real merit or otherwise of a piece of legislation.
I would also quibble with the two provisions in section 1, one of which is contained within the brackets of subsection (1) and the other is in subsection (3) of section 1, the effect of both of which is to stop payment to a widow in the event of her remarriage. As Senator Cranitch so very eloquently explained to the Minister and to the House, the widows of the military service pensioners were very often the people who kept the military service pensioner going at the time he was in active service. Very often, as he and Senator Gallanagh pointed out to the House, the widows of those pensioners who at that time were their wives, were the people who provided care, comfort and shelter for their husbands. They fought for them and provided alibis for them. As the Senators on the Government side of the House pointed out to the Minister, very often those women would have been entitled to military service pensions themselves if they had applied for them but they were content that their husbands should receive pensions, not for the financial amount involved but because it recognised the services rendered by the husbands and indeed the services rendered by the whole family.
If the State feels grateful to a man and in turn feels grateful to his widow — apparently feels grateful, or at least feels 50 per cent grateful, if the terms of this Bill are an indication — why then should the State be grateful to an IRA veteran who is a military service pensioner and be 50 per cent as grateful to his widow until such time as she, as Senator Belton has suggested, commits the heinous crime of remarriage? I assume that Senator Belton was being just a little facetious when he suggested that the State was forcing the widows of military service pensioners, who felt inclined to remarry, to instead live in sin in order to continue in receipt of their £52 a year, or whatever it might be. Senator Gallanagh has suggested that there are many men of 80 or 81 running around with young girls of 21 and that there may be quite a few of these widows who are still, if not in the first bloom of youth, at least able to get out and about, make acquaintances and meet friends.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of these women are middle-aged and elderly women and it is highly unlikely that they would want to get married again. In the event of their wanting to get married I do not see why there should be something contained in a piece of legislation which would inhibit them. It is hardly likely that there will be a number of gigolos chasing about the country looking for the widows of Army service pensioners to get their hands on the 50 per cent of the Army service pension. The prevention of a situation such as that is the only reason that I can see for having included in the Bill the words "provided she has not remarried" in subsection (1) of section 1 and the whole of subsection (3) in section 1.
It is an undue interference by the State in the private life and activities of a group of people who have already suffered far too much. I am a bit surprised at those Members of the House who are exponents of equal rights for women, not having already made their voices heard by the Minister very clearly and definitely in this regard. In any sort of scheme such as this, which is designed to implement the provision of pensions to a group of people who did not previously qualify for them there is always a certain amount of difficulty in establishing where they are, who they are and where they live. I know this because I am aware of the difficulty which the Department of Finance encountered in trying to implement the ex gratia payments to widows of civil servants.
I would imagine at first that it would be quite a simple task. All you have to do is write to the last known address of the husband and you will find the widow. In many cases, following the death of the husband, the widow will move to a new address and perhaps to a second or third address, not realising that a Minister for Defence in 1971 will decide to pay her half of what her husband was getting by way of pension. She will not think of acquainting the Department of Defence of that fact. I should like the Minister, when he is replying, to let us know how he anticipates contacting the widows of these military service pensioners. Will he merely write out to the last known address, in which case he will find a very high percentage of non-replies, or does he anticipate utilising the vast resources of the Department of Social Welfare to get the assistance of their investigation officers to follow up and find out if the widow is still living in the area or where she may have moved to? Will he, as the Department of Finance did, advertise to a fair extent in the national Press and on television in an effort to contact these people?
It is not good enough if we implement a scheme like this and say "It is there and available for them so long as they find out about it." The onus is surely upon the Department of Defence to make every effort to contact these widows, to explain the provisions of the scheme and to inform them that they are entitled to a pension, even if it is only 50 per cent of the pension which was being paid to their husbands. What we are doing here is paying to quite a small number of women half the pension which their husbands had been receiving. Again, in the year 1971 it is a little ironic that we should be talking of paying a minimum pension of £52.20 per year to the widows of the men who fought for and secured for us the freedom which we enjoy today in this part of the country and for which we should be very grateful when we read the distressing news of what is happening in another part of the country.
