§ MR. SLOANTo ask the Postmaster General if he is aware that women clerk in the Accountant's Office, Dublin, have their maximum salaries fixed at £10 per annum less than those of women clerk in the London office, who have been appointed from the same competitive examinations, while no such distinction is made in the case of men clerks employed in the same office, and whose conditions of appointment are identical and that memorials from women clerk in Dublin praying for remuneration similar to that given to the women clerk in London have been refused on the grounds that the cost of living is less in Dublin than in London, and that it is the practice of the Post Office to pay less salary at provincial offices; and will he explain why these reasons do not apply in the case of men clerks and whether, seeing that the former reason has been disproved before a Treasury Commission to reduce the salaries of other civil servants stationed in Dublin, and that the latter applies to the capital of Ireland, and that this reduction of maximum salary in the case of women clerks transferred from London to Dublin is a violation of the conditions of their appointment, he will consider the case of the women clerks in Dublin with a view to giving them remuneration equal to that given women clerks in London.
(Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The scale of the Second Division clerks fixed by the Treasury, as they belong to a class common to the whole of the Civil Service. The women clerks were all under the terms of their engagement appointed to London offices, and it was only at their own request that they were subsequently transferred to Dublin, with the full knowledge that the scale in Dublin was lower. Transfers to Dublin are much sought after by women clerks, and if any of those who have bean transferred to Dublin would prefer to return 1331 to London, their application shall be considered and endeavour made to arrange a transfer.