§ MR. HOWELL (Bethnal Green, N. E.)asked Mr. Attorney General, Whether the existing Savings Banks Acts provide any adequate legal machinery for enforcing any award made by the Registrar of Friendly Societies against the Trustees of any savings bank for the recovery of money due to depositors; whether an award for the sum of £16,000, made against the Trustees of the Tralee Savings Bank by the then Registrar in 1847, on the ground of wilful neglect, was overruled by the Court of Queen's Bench; and, whether, in view of the inability of depositors in such banks to undertake expensive litigation for the 171 recovery of their scanty savings, the Government will take steps to enforce such awards in the future?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir RICHARD WEBSTER) (Isle of Wight)Awards made by the Registrar of Friendly Societies can be readily and cheaply enforced under the provisions of the statute passed in the first and second years of the Queen. The statutes in force in Ireland in 1847 are repealed, and the Savings Bank Act of 1863 provides a machinery applicable to the whole of the United Kingdom. The Tralee case, as far as I can trace it, failed upon grounds independent of the statute. There is not, in my opinion, any necessity for Government to interfere in enforcing the awards.