OLD AGE PENSIONS (IRELAND.)

HC Deb 18 March 1910 vol 15 cc663-710

Mr. CULLINAN

I rise to call attention to a matter of vital importance to thousands of people in Ireland. It has reference to the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act, and it affects thousands of people who are in that miserable condition which was so feelingly referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he introduced the Old Age Pensions Bill. I find, according to Whitaker, that 20,000 people in Ireland have been deprived of the pension on grounds of age, 8,000 on grounds of estimates of maintenance made by pension officers. It is certainly a very serious matter where altogether some 35,000 people in Ireland over seventy years of age, owing to the administration, are deprived of the pension. The administration of the Act in Ireland has caused the greatest disappointment. Matters were working smoothly under the pension committees, but when it was seen that a large number of pensions were being granted, hon. Members in this House representing English constituencies, and speakers on every platform, made most extraordinary charges in regard to the pensions granted in Ireland. They came to the conclusion that Ireland was getting far more than its share, and the pension committees in Ireland were charged with every species of corruption, deception, and fraud. I was chairman of a committee, and I have had opportunities of attending several pension committees in Ireland, and I must certainly declare that a more unfounded charge never was made against any bodies of honourable gentlemen. I can most certainly say that in every case the pension committees have given the closest investigation and the closest consideration to the cases brought before them, and I can challenge any hon. Members of this House or any person outside the House to give me a single instance in which the committees in Ireland have attempted by deception or other means to get a pension for any poor person in Ireland. After this clamour action was taken, by whom we cannot ascertain. When we ask the Chief Secretary a question on old age pensions, he refers us to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who tells us the Local Government Board in Ireland are responsible. Next moment we are told that it is the Customs and Excise authorities who are responsible, or the Chief Secretary, in his turn, will transfer the responsibility to the Local Government Board. Really, be- tween all these authorities, we do not know where we are. I am very glad of this opportunity to get a clear answer to the different questions we desire to put. As a result of the clamour there has been a revision of the pensions which have been granted. According to the decision in the Pawley case the Local Government Board have no power to interfere where cases have already been decided except where really new facts are introduced. I know of several cases in which no new facts have been introduced and where the pension officers have granted the pensions, but new officers were sent into the district to deal with those cases, and the result of that, according to the answer given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, is that some 10,000 people in Ireland have been deprived of their pensions. We consider this very unfair, that it is not in keeping with the Old Age Pensions Act, and we want a clear answer as to what instructions were given to the pension officers who have taken action in the matter—whether it is the Local Government Board in Ireland, the Customs authorities, or the Treasury. I asked the Secretary of the Treasury to supply this House with the instructions given to the pension officers in Ireland. His answer was that those are confidential documents, and consequently could not be given to the Members of the House, but some of them have come to light. I am especially anxious to get from the Secretary to the Treasury the instructions which were given to the pension officers in Ireland as to estimating the cost of maintenance of those poor old people who are living with their married sons and married daughters. He said that they acted on those private instructions which were given, but the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for the Forest of Dean, kindly supplied me with an answer to a question which was given yesterday by the Secretary of the Treasury, and which I think is thoroughly typical of the manner in which the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act has been carried on in Ireland. That reply says:— The action of the pension officers in Ireland in adopting a rough-and-ready method of assessment of the profits derived from small agricultural holdings in certain cases, was covered by general instructions from the Commissioners of Inland Revenue under No. 34 of the Old Age Pensions Regulations. l908.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

Will the hon. Gentleman give me the date of that?

Sir CHARLES DILKE

It was printed and circulated yesterday morning.

Mr. CULLINAN

It is an extraordinary thing to say, that this Act passed for the benefit of the aged people should be carried out by the pension officers adopting a rough-and-ready method of estimating the assessment. I think that is a complete illustration of the way in which the Act has been administered in Ireland. We have not only ten thousand people deprived of pensions, but in many cases in which the pensions have been reduced, on the pensioner or applicant the Local Government Board have refused to give any pension whatever. I would like to know where are the instructions, and who is in power. The Committee has no power. The pension officer recommends. I have the particulars of a case in which a pension of five shillings per week was reduced to three shillings. The pensioner appealed to the Local Government Board, who refused to grant any pension whatever. Who has any authority is what we want to know. Another extraordinary fact is as to maintenance. An old person is living with a son or daughter, and for this living an estimate is made by which the old persons are deprived of any assistance whatever. With regard to poor relief in Ireland, we have had cases over and over again in which the medical officer certified that the parties were receiving medical treatment because of illness to which they were subject, and not poor relief, but notwithstanding that in every case which came before my Committee the Local Government Board refused to recognise the Medical Officer's certificate, and refused to give any pension whatever. We have had some most extraordinary cases in which absence from the country has come in. There is one case of a child born in America and kept there until it was four months old. It was then brought to Ireland, and though this poor man now is seventy-three years of age and has lived in Ireland for seventy-two years and eight months, he is deprived of a pension, despite the fact that his father and mother were both Irish, and because, as a baby, he spent four months in America he is not to be recognised under the Pensions Act. Then we have most outrageous cases in which the Local Government Board sanctioned pensions to old people and where they have received pensions for months, the pension officers have gone into the merits of those cases again and reduced the pensions, while the Local Government Board refused to sanction the reduced pension, and those poor people are actually asked to refund the amount which had been paid to them, and sanctioned previously by the pension committee and the Local Government Board. I know of a case in my own country, in the City of Cashel, where a poor man had been receiving a pension for months and was then deprived of it. The pension officer went to that man and told him if he did not pay the amount that had been already paid to him in pensions, proceedings would be taken against him, and the only few pounds that man had in the world were refunded to the pension officer. I really think that is simply monstrous. Where is the power under the Act to compel a poor man or poor woman who has been in receipt of a pension sanctioned by the Local Government Board, to turn round and to mulct those people by demanding the refund.

So many of those cases arose in Ireland that they caused the greatest discontent amongst the Old Age Pension Committee. So great was the discontent that a move was made in Ireland to have Old Age Pension Committees retire in a body. They felt as honourable men that they could not allow themselves to be ignored, to be snubbed, and to be insulted by the pension officers, the Local Government. Board, the Treasury, or whoever is accountable. I have never been able to find out after many questions, nor have my hon. Friends, who is responsible. Instead of retiring it was suggested that a meeting should be held of representatives of the different Old Age Pension Committees in Ireland, and consequently a meeting of representatives of the four Provinces of Ireland was held in Dublin last December. I had the honour of being appointed chairman of that body, and in order to get all the information possible, and to assist the All-Ireland Committee, I undertook to receive all communications from the different parts of Ireland as to complaints of administration of the Act. I must say I undertook a very troublesome job, because I received communications from all parts-of the most extraordinary character. This All-Ireland Committee decided to appoint a deputation to wait on the Chief Secretary to discuss matters with him. It was considered perfectly useless to go to the Local Government Board as they were administering the Act, but there was the hope that we might get some redress from the Chief Secretary. The General Election came on and it was very hard to find the Chief Secretary during that time, so that we were unable to hare the pleasure of an interview with the right hon. Gentleman. Then a meeting of the General Council of the County Councils was held and that body appointed a sub-committee to deal with this question and to co-operate with the All-Ireland Pension Committee, and they appointed a deputation to wait upon the Local Government Board.

In these circumstances, when I speak as chairman of the All-Ireland Pension Committee, and as a member of the General Council of County Councils, my representative character must be recognised. The Committee discussed the different points of dispute between the pension committees and the Local Government Board, and they requested the Board, as these people had in their belief been illegally deprived of their pensions, to have the points in dispute immediately decided in the High Court. As the General Council of County Councils and the pension committees have no money at their disposal, it was considered that the Treasury ought to bear the legal costs involved, and to this the Local Government Board were agreeable. When I came over here as representing these bodies, I saw the Chief Secretary, who had to see the Secretary to the Treasury, and I saw the Secretary to the Treasury, who had to see the Chief Secretary, but I could get no satisfactory answer. Eventually the Secretary to the Treasury told me that no communication had come before him. My information was that the Local Government Board of Ireland had communicated with the Treasury. It is time that strong action should be taken in the matter, and a definite result arrived at. I have had a case before me in which the Local Government Board came to an extraordinary decision. A pension was given to an old man; the pension officer appealed against it, but it was decided that the appeal was too late. So the man got his pension. The pension officer then went into the matter again, raised some new points, and the pension was disallowed, the pensioner this time being said to be too late in his appeal. The matter was again gone into; the committee decided that the man was entitled to 5s. a week; the pension officer recommended 3s.; the Local Government Board sanctioned the 3s., but for eight months they did the man out of the 3s. to which he was entitled. The pension committees are completely ignored; they have no power to do anything whatever. See- ing that the Census Returns in. Ireland are not what they are in England, one would have thought that when the committees, with their local knowledge, could produce circumstantial evidence as to the age of an applicant, it would be, accepted; but instead of that, the committees are completely overruled.

The question of maintenance is another matter that requires to be dealt with. In many cases the father or mother makes over the farm to a son or daughter, but the pension officer suggests that the transfer is bogus, and that it is made only for the purpose of qualifying for a pension. In reply to a question the Attorney-General stated that in his experience all these transactions were perfectly bonâ fide; but they are being used by pension officers as a means of depriving old people of their pensions. Such applicants are also being disqualified because, in making over the farm, they have arranged that if they go away from the farm to live they should be entitled to an allowance of £5 or £10 a year; but all the time they live on the farm they are not entitled to any money. What have the pension officers done? They have actually added this allowance to the cost of maintenance, and by that means disqualified thousands of old people. These small farmers in Ireland live on very scanty food. When the old mother lives on the farm she attends to the children, looks after the house, and so on. Surely she ought to be entitled to some allowance for that; but it is not taken into consideration. I know the circumstances in which these people live. They seldom have butter for breakfast, they never have it for supper; they may have a little bacon and potatoes, occasionally; and yet this is estimated by the pension officers generally at 12s. a week, and in other cases at 15s. People of the best artisan class can live in London for 15s. a week; they will have bacon and eggs for breakfast, roast beef or roast mutton for dinner, and butter for tea. In Ireland they have none of these luxuries, and yet their maintenance is estimated at the same rate as in London. In Lancashire people of the same class can live on 12s. a week.

But while the pension officers consider 12s. a week a reasonable allowance for the maintenance of an old man or woman of seventy or eighty years of age, they allow for a son or daughter from twenty-one to thirty years of age working on the farm only 4s. a week. It is very hard to have patience in dealing with this subject. Over and over again the pension committees have applied to the Local Government Board for their reasons for refusing pensions, but they have been unable to obtain them. They have asked for the return of papers in order to revise them, but the Board have stated that under some regulation or other they have been sent to the pension officer, and the pension officer when applied to says he has sent them to the Local Government Board. Consequently, amid all this confusion of sending from one to another, it is impossible to get any satisfactory answer.

Our trouble in dealing with this matter is to ascertain who is really responsible. We have been pegging at the Local Government Board since this revision took place. We have been at the Irish Office and at the Treasury. We have got no satisfaction whatever. One of the arguments used against us over and over again is that we are getting more than we are entitled to. I hold here a report of the proceedings of a deputation that, in January last, waited upon the Local Government Board. It was stated there by a gentleman who deserves honourable mention in connection with the working of the Act and the great time he has devoted to getting the necessary details, and who is a member of the Wexford County Council—and I hope that the English Press which have been making such savage attacks on the pension committees in Ireland will give publicity to this—referring to the outcry in England against the alleged disproportion and excess of Irish claims:— The‥‥and the Census Returns of 1841 the first available, gave the population of England and Wales as over 1.5,000,000, and that of Ireland as over 8,000,000. On that basis, Ireland would be entitled to a proportion of about one-third of the pensions, as against two-thirds for England and Wales. According to 'Whitaker's Almanac,' the number of old age pensioners in England and Wales is 393,700, and in Ireland 183,500. Consequently not only did Ireland not exceed her due proportion, but had actually received some 15,000 pensions less than her share. I think that is a very important matter for the consideration of the Members of this House. I would like to give one or two cases, which I can vouch for, typical of the disapproval of the pension committees in Ireland, and the action of the Local Government Board and the pension officers. As to the question of age. Here is a case which Father Clancy, of county Clare, gives. James Kileil, of Kilkin, was not in the 1841 or 1851 Census, and he had no baptismal certificate, but his age was testified to by a man who had known him for fifty years. The Local Government Board decided against him. After that decision Father Clancy got a certificate from the Hon. Mrs. MacDonell, aunt of the present Lord Inchiquin, that applicant was a coachman fifty-four years to her late husband, Colonel MacDonell, Newhall, Ennis. Surely he was sixteen years old I when he first became a coachman. That shows the injustice of the first decision, and of the determination of the Local Government Board to ignore all collateral testimony as to age apart from a baptismal certificate.

We are reminded of the Census by the Local Government Board, and I have a case in my own district—C. Hanly. The Census gave him as sixty-nine years of age, and his baptismal certificate as seventy-one. In another case a man in my Constituency was allowed 5s. a week by the pension committee on the testimony of his parish priest, who had known the applicant for sixty years. It was appealed against, and the Local Government Board refused to give him the pension.

Let me come to the county of Meath. I have received from the secretary of the county council the result of their inquiry as to the Census. They say: "We find Charles McGrath returned in the 1841 Census as one year, returned in the 1851 Census as ten years old. We find R. Kelly returned in the 1841 Census as two years old, and in the 1851 Census as ten years old." Really when you have a Census in Ireland taken in such a peculiar fashion, I think it is only fair and reasonable that, at any rate, local circumstances should be taken into consideration, that there should be some means devised by which this matter should not be left in the hands of the pension officers, and that you should have an independent inquiry held in conjunction with the committee.

I have here a letter from the county of Roscommon Pension Committee. It relates to an extraordinary case. John Casey was, on 20th December, 1908, on the report of the pension officer, granted a pension of 5s. per week by the sub-committee. On 27th April, 1909, the pension officer raised the question as to whether the pensioner was entitled, on the ground of age, to receive the pension. He produced a copy of an entry in the Census Returns of 1851 which showed that the pensioner was not seventy years of age. The sub-committee had taken the copy of a Census Return from the parish priest, which showed the pensioner to be seventy-three years of age. But this was ignored by the Local Government Board who refused their sanction to the pension.

Here is the case—which I referred to a moment ago—of an old man living in the county of Clare. He says that he wishes to let me know that in November, 1908, he was allowed 3s. by the pension officer. He went before the county committee, and they allowed him 5s. The pension officer appealed against that decision, and the applicant also appealed, but he was told that he was too late, and his pension was disallowed. At the next sub-committee meeting he applied again, and the pension officer recommended that the 3s. should be replaced. The Local Government Board sanctioned this, but they kept the poor man for eight months out of his pension by this procedure.

As to the question of maintenance, here is an extract from a letter relating to Charles McGrath, of Mayasta, county Clare. He and his wife had got the pension for some months. They had given up their place, valued at £24 5s., to the man who married their niece. For themselves they only retained the grass of a cow, about a quarter of an acre of a haggard, and a room in the dwelling-house. They had £100 in cash, but had to support themselves, not having made any provision in the marriage settlement for their support. Their case was overhauled by a new pension officer, who valued their means at £26 each. The pension committee decided that the pension was to continue at 5s. a week to each. The pension officer appealed to the Local Government Board, who decided that their means were equal to £31 10s. each. Is that not outrageous? Now the action of the pension committee in rehearing the case was illegal, the subsequent proceedings were illegal, and these people are simply being robbed in that case. First an outrageously high valuation is fixed on the means of living of these poor people, and then the injustice is inflicted of depriving them of the pension in defiance of the Pawley case. I have several cases dealing with similar instances, but I will only give one more, and that is a case of which I have personal knowledge. It is the case of a woman named Hester Grogan, living with her nephew at Bansha, county Tipperary. Her father died about forty years ago, and gave the farm over to his son. The son got married and had a family. He and his wife died, and the aunt reared the children. She lived in the house, but she was only there on suffrance, as no provision had been made for her. The eldest son got married and has four children, and in addition has two brothers and two sisters living with him. The old aunt, seventy-three years of age, applied for a pension. The pension officer recommended 3s. She appealed to the Local Government Board, with the result she was refused a pension altogether. On my advice she again applied to the pension committee. I was thoroughly conversant with all the circumstances of the case; we passed a strong resolution and presented the strongest case we possibly could to the Local Government Board, but notwithstanding that, and the fact that this woman is a pauper, her claim was refused. A man named Patrick Doherty, Ballyhurst, county Tipperary, was allowed by his nephews to live with them; they had a very poor place, yet the pension officer estimated the cost of his maintenance at £26 a year. He told the pension officer he had £80, and the officer calculated that at the rate of 4 per cent, and added £3 12s. to his estimated cost of maintenance, bringing the whole up to £29 12s., and deprived the man of a pension.

I come now to the case of value put upon the produce of a farm. These things are estimated by the pension officers, many of whom come over from England and come out of towns and cities. Many of them would not know a sheep from a goat, yet they are asked to make an estimate of the cost of produce, but they refuse generally to take into consideration the cost of the labour of sons upon the farm, or the daughter, and indeed in no case will they make any allowance for the labour of the daughter, though in the case of the son they occasionally allow 4s. a week.

1.0 P.M

The next case to which I would wish to refer is that of a man named Pat Casey, Strokestown, county Roscommon. He has five acres of poor land, for which he pays £5 a year rent; the Poor Law valuation is £6 15s. Two acres of the land are arable, and the rest is bog. He has a family of eight, yet he was refused a pension on the ground that the cost of his maintenance was over £26 a year. I could multiply this case by the dozen. Then there are the cases and the reduction of pensions. Here is the case of a man named William Hogan. In a marriage settlement he assigned his place to his son. The pension officer estimated that this man was only entitled to 3s., on the ground that he obtains an equivalent of 10s. a week from his son. These estimates are put on quite unjustly, and these poor people are defrauded of the full pension. A Mrs. Synnot, of Waterford, was threatened recently that unless she paid back £6 15s. unknown consequences would fall upon her. There was a case in Enniscorthy, county Wexford, where a husband and wife were awarded old age pensions. The husband was subsequently struck off, and 2s. a week was deducted from the wife's money to reimburse the Treasury for what the old man had been paid. Numerous cases have come under my notice where appeals to the Local Government Board against the decision of the pension officer in granting a lesser sum than 5s. have resulted in pensioners being deprived of the pension altogether. In one case a man had been kicked by a horse and had to go to hospital. Medical certificates were sent to the Local Government Board to that effect, but they were ignored, and the man was disqualified. In another case a man had to go to hospital owing to injuries received by a severe fall from a tree. Three medical certificates were sent in, but they were ignored. Another case was that of an old man suffering from a severe attack of heart disease. The doctor certified he was not a fit case for hospital, and that his only chance was to live in the open air. When all these cases are taken into consideration, I think it will be admitted that we are perfectly justified in complaining in Ireland, and something should be done to prevent the abuses which are practised. Over and over again we have directed the attention of the Local Government Board to the facts. I am thoroughly convinced that the Local Government Board are in some way hampered by somebody whom we cannot find out. The great hardship in these cases is that, having given these poor people 5s. a week for months, and brought some comfort into their lives, they are then unjustly struck off and sent back to poverty and misery. It is an outrageous hardship. I would like to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what are the powers of these pension committees? Have they power to grant a pension to any person. Up to the present time those committees have not been allowed to exercise any power whatever, and they have been completely ignored. Pension officers are not allowed to attend our meetings or supply us with any information. They do not return to us the papers upon which we have grounded our case, and they deny us every opportunity of going into the facts. I wish to deal with this question moderately and reasonably, because we value this Act in Ireland very much, and we consider old age pensions are the greatest blessing which has been conferred upon Ireland for a long time. It is because we appreciate this Act in Ireland that the pension committees have, to the best of their ability, tried to prevent anything in the shape of giving pensions to persons who are not entitled to receive them. I am in a position to challenge any person in England or Ireland to produce one single instance in which a pension committee in Ireland has descended to anything in the shape of deception in the administration of the Act. The Act is too valuable a thing for Irishmen to do anything of that kind.

My impression is that the Treasury gave way to a sort of panic, and by its action through the Local Government Board it has completely disheartened the administration of the Act. Whether the Treasury or the Customs or Excise authorities are responsible for this I should very much like to know. I have reason to believe that in many cases the Local Government Board in Ireland are powerless. Between the Treasury and the Customs authorities some system seems to have been adopted by which they use every possible effort to defeat the successful and just working of the Act in Ireland. As for assessing the cost of maintenance, I hope this question will not be left in the hands of the pension officers, because the majority of them know nothing of the cost of maintenance in Ireland. We ask that a competent person shall be appointed to make a fair estimate of the cost of maintenance of the poor people in Ireland, and they should arrive at a decision after consultation with the local pension committees. We ask that an independent person should be appointed to consult with the local committees and go into all questions of dispute as to age and other matters. We ask that all questions in dispute should be settled at once in the Law Courts, and that the Treasury should bear the entire expense. I have been in communication with the Secretary to the Treasury and the Chief Secretary for Ireland recently upon this matter. I have had a letter from the Chief Secretary in which he states that the Vice-President of the Local Government Board was coming over to this country and he would consider the matter with him. I asked the right hon. Gentleman to receive a deputation consisting of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford, myself, and others, and he replied that as the Vice-President was coming over he would consult that official and let me know the result, and then he would decide whether it was necessary to receive the deputation I suggested. I know the Vice-President of the Local Government Board has been over, but I have heard nothing further from the right hon. Gentleman.

I think the powers of the pension committees should be more clearly defined. Up to the present they have been completely ignored, and as honourable men I am afraid they will decline to act if they are going to be treated as mere automatons. In cases where pensions have been stopped I think it is only just that the full amount of arrears should be paid. I would like to know where the Treasury obtained the right to demand from these poor people the refunding of money paid to them as pensions. Those pensions have been sanctioned by the Local Government Board, and the pension officer and I would like to know where power is given to interfere. It is also necessary that we should know exactly what is the value of a medical certificate. These poor people distinctly come under the Act, and notwithstanding that Act you refuse to recognise them. The Irish people are really grateful for this Act, and they certainly do appreciate the generous action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman is not present, otherwise I should have appealed to him on this point. When this measure was introduced the right hon. Gentleman expressed in a most kindly manner his feeling as to the benefits which would accrue under this Act, and he pictured what it would mean to take the old people in advanced years from poverty and misery into comparative luxury, in a sense. Had the right hon. Gentleman been present I would have appealed to him to step into the breach in this case and endeavour to stop the jerrymandering which has been going on so long by the Treasury. I ask with true honesty and true sincerity the Government to give to the poor people who have been deprived of their old age pensions that justice which humanity and decency demands for them.

Mr. THOMAS SCANLAN

I wish to draw attention to some of the gross irregularities of the system under which old age pensions are administered in Ireland. There is a growing conviction amongst the people—and this conviction has been clearly expressed by county councils and parish councils and the members of the pension committees and sub-committees that a large number of the people in Ireland over the age of seventy are being fraudulently treated and deprived of pensions to which they are justly entitled. The Old Age Pensions Act contemplated that a pension should be given to every person over seventy years of age.

Of course, one can understand the action of the Treasury in the matter. Whether it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary to the Treasury who is responsible for making the estimate as to the amount that would be required for the payment of the pensions, a gross miscalculation was made in the case of Ireland, and a public clamour was raised in this country by newspapers of both shades of politics that Ireland was being too liberally treated. I have no doubt there is no fraudulent intention on the part of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite or of any Department of the Government, but the fact is just the same to those poor people in Ireland who have been deprived of their pensions. You can quite understand that those who have built up their hopes of having an old age of comparative peace and comfort and now find that this hope is defeated by the action of responsible officials of the Government regard this largely in the nature of a fraud. It is evident that, when the Treasury officials made their calculations they were under the impression that the proportion in Ireland who should get pensions was something like one-eighth of the number of pensions to be paid in England. This calculation was based on the population of England. Scotland and Ireland according to the Census of 1901. In that year the population of England was over 32,000,000, whilst the population of Ireland was 4,000,000.

The crucial period, however, on which the calculation ought to have been based is seventy years ago, and. taking the figures at that time, you find that the population in England was a little over 15,000,000, in Scotland a little over 2,000,000, and in Ireland 8,000,000. Taking, therefore, the true test in the two countries, Ireland, instead of an eighth, should, roughly speaking, receive about half the pensions paid in England. I obtained an answer from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hobhouse) as to the pensions paid in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively at the present time, and the numbers are: England, 405,755; Scotland, 76,000; Wales, 26,000; and Ireland, 183,971, or considerably less than one-third of the total number of persons in receipt of pensions. This answer was given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on 14th March, and Appears in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Parliamentary Debates for that date. I submit this shows conclusively that at the present time, tested by the Census of 1841, Ireland is not getting by a long way that proportion of the total paid in pensions which the people of the country are entitled to in respect of population. I asked the Chief Secretary recently whether, in view of the defects in the working of the Act, and the irregularities which are being brought to light every day by questions asked by Members from Ireland, he would not consider the desirability of appointing a Commission to investigate the working of the Old Age Pensions Act in Ireland, and he refused. We have asked, as my hon. Friend has said, for information as to the regulations under which the Old Age Pensions Act is being administered, and it is a kind of game of hunt the slipper. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury cannot give us the information, and says it is a matter for the Board of Customs and Excise, which, of course, is the Treasury, and indeed the most important part of the Treasury; and in this matter the Local Government Board is also a part of the Treasury. No one in Ireland has any confidence whatever in the fair or honest administration of the Old Age Pensions Act, just because there are such innumerable glaring cases as those quoted by my hon. Friend.

In two main respects Ireland is being unfairly treated. It has been repeatedly admitted from the Treasury Bench that the Census of 1841 has been found from time to time, in hundreds of cases in different parts of Ireland, to be unreliable. Surely it is not the intention of the Old Age Pensions Act that simply because a person's age is not entered in the Census of 1841 through no fault of his own, or that of his parents, the Census at that time being taken by police officials, that he should be deprived of his pension. It is evident that it was the intention of the Legislature that the ages of applicants should be determined by the best evidence obtainable. The Local Government Board took a very sensible course when the Act first came into operation. They said that where there was no evidence provided by a baptismal register—and there was no such thing as a proper Government register until long after 1841—such evidence as was available would be taken, and it was recommended that the pension officer of each district should take all the assistance he could get from clergymen and others. When, however, it was found that there was such a large number of persons entitled to old age pensions in Ireland, secret instructions were evidently issued, either by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd-George), the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. Birrell), or by the Local Government Board, that in every case where there was no documentary evidence of age the applicant should be deprived of his old age pension unless, on looking up the Census Returns of 1841, an entry was found relative to him. That is entirely beyond the contemplation of the Act.

The administration of the Act by the Local Government Board as a final court of appeal is very unsatisfactory, and it seems to me a great misfortune that so much power, practically the power of a court of law, is given to the Local Government Board in Ireland, whatever that body is, in reference to final decisions on questions under the Old Age Pensions Act. Looking to the terms of the Act, we see that the central pensions authority may act through such committee, person, or persons appointed by them as they think fit. One would like to know, in reference to the working of this Act: What is the Irish Local Government at the present time? Is it the Chief Secretary? Who are associated with the Chief Secretary? Is the whole work of administration under the Act left to a junior clerk or office boy in the office of the Local Government Board in Ireland? The people of Ireland have no confidence in the action or discrimination of the Irish Local Government Board, or in the judicial character of the decisions given by them. I have not the slightest doubt that when this Act was passing through the House of Commons the provision giving this arbitrary and absolute power to the Local Government Board would never have been passed, but would have been protested against from all quarters of the House, had it not been for the fact that everybody believed that great discretion would be given to the local pension committees and to the central pension committee. You have in the local pension committee something of the elements of a judicial tribunal. You have a body of men taken pretty much as a jury is taken, appointed locally and having no interest in the Treasury on the one hand, or in the parties making application on the other. Above that committee you have a higher revising committee. It was thought, and I believe rightly thought, that so far as the greater part of the United Kingdom was concerned the decisions of the sub-committees and the central pension committees would be given full effect to by the Local Government Board. I am in a position to point out to the House that so far as England and Scotland are concerned that is the case. The decisions of the pension committees deliberately come to in respect of age and means are given effect to. Yesterday I asked for information in regard to the number of cases in which pensions once given had been taken away by the Local Government Board in Scotland. The answer I got from the Lord Advocate for Scotland was:— The total number of cases since the passing of the Act in which the Local Government Board for Scotland has taken away pensions is forty-four. I know from other than Parliamentary sources that in England the number relative to the population is about the same. Yesterday I asked the President of the Local Government Board if he would state the number of cases in England and Wales in which pensions which had been granted and for some time paid had been withdrawn by his Board since the passing of the Old Age Pensions Act. The President of the Local Government Board said:— I regret it is not practicable to give the figures desired.'' I think the House is entitled to such a figure as that, and that it is the duty of the President of the Local Government Board to supply any Member of this House on such a public matter with this information. Why is it impracticable? Is not the Local Government Board, an expensive Department of the State, provided with an official at its head who is getting £5,000 a year and a very expensive set of clerks, for whom we pay through the general taxation of the country? I know and assert—I challenge contradiction on this point —that the proportion of pensions withdrawn by the Local Government Board in England is not greater than the proportion in Scotland, and I again call attention to the fact that the number in Scotland is only forty-four. I asked the same question with regard to Ireland, and the Chief Secretary answered:— The number of cases in Ireland in which pensions that were granted and for some time paid were subsequently withdrawn by the Local Government Board on questions raised in respect of age was 4,588, up to February 26th last. The cases in which pensions were withdrawn on other grounds have not been separately tabulated, and in order to obtain this information an examination of the many thousands of cases in which questions have been raised would be necessary, and time does not permit of this being done. I think the Chief Secretary is not in a position to contradict me if I make the assertion, as I do with confidence, that the total number of cases in which pensions have been withdrawn, not only in respect of age, but also in respect of appeals on questions of means, is about 10,000.

The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell)

Eight thousand.

Mr. SCANLAN

Is it not a scandal that such a state of things should arise? If 8,000 people who are not entitled to them have for some time been getting pensions, that is unfair to the Treasury, and I submit that it is not only unfair, but cruel to the people, if, after they get the pensions, they are taken away again. Nothing, to my mind, could be more cruel to an old person expecting the benefit than to give; the pension for three or four months, as the result of his application to a quasi-judicial tribunal, and then to have some person coming from the Treasury, or the Board of Customs and Excise, or the Local Government Board, and making inquiries which are by no means public—making them in a kind of Star Chamber fashion— and then to deprive him of his pension. With regard to the whole question of means, I think that matter has been fairly dealt with by the hon. Member who has just sat down. The question of the ascertainment of means might be pretty much on a parallel in Scotland and in Ireland, because the economic circumstances of the-people applying for pensions in the crofting districts of Scotland are practically on all fours with the economic conditions of the people living in the agricultural slums of the congested districts of the West and South of Ireland. We find, however, that the same set of officials, pension officers, are sent from Somerset House or from the Treasury to Scotland with instructions different from those they get hi Ireland. In Ireland instructions are given as to the value to be placed upon the produce of a cow to the farmer or cottar, and the amount which is treated as the economic value of the holdings is different in Scotland from what it is in Ireland. My information is that at the commencement of the operation of the Act a decision was come to that the sum of £4 was a fair estimate of the value to be placed on the earning capacity of a cow or on the economic value of a cow to its owner, but in the course of the working of the Act and after this false clamour was raised by British newspapers, fresh instructions were given to the pension officers—and it is a fact on which I challenge contradiction—that, instead of taking £4 as the earning capacity of a cow in Ireland, its value was to be taken to be £6 or £7. I do not think there is anything corresponding in the amount of produce which would justify such an increase.

In view of the fact that difficulties have arisen in the working of this Act, I submit "that the proper and reasonable thing for the Treasury or the Irish Local Government Board to do would be to appoint a Commission from the House of Commons to take evidence on oath from those concerned in the working of the Act. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury will not give the instructions he issues or which the Board of Customs and Excise issue and send out to the different districts of Ireland for the important work of acting in defence of the Treasury more than in the administration of the Act. I think, seeing that such iregularities even in the withdrawal of pensions have taken place, that such an inquiry is called for and justified. If such an inquiry is made, I have not the slightest doubt that the result will be to bring about greater ease in the working of the Act, and to restore the confidence of the people of Ireland that it is not the intention of the Government or the Treasury to deprive them of the pensions to which they are entitled. While the people of Ireland are in the position of seeing the decisions of the local and county pension committees habitually disregarded by the Local Government Board, there can be no confidence in the working of the Act. I should like to say a word in reference to one class of case which is very prevalent in Ireland, and which causes the very gravest dissatisfaction, and that is one where the applicant for a pension has his application considered by the pension committee, and they come to the conclusion that his means are such that he is entitled to the maximum pension, but the pension officer on the other hand arrives at a different conclusion. He does not hold that the man is entitled to no pension, but that he is entitled to a modified one. You have over and over again cases of that kind. The pension committee decides upon a pension of 4s. or 5s., but the pension officer recommends one of 2s. or 3s. The matter is then referred to the Local Government Board, and I submit that the matter for the determination of this tribunal—bad and imperfect as it is, and I think it is as bad and imperfect as it can well be—has nothing, whatever to do with any other question than whether the pension should be 2s., 3s., 4s. or 5s. But what do you find? The Local Government Board systematically when they get a case of that kind submitted to them do not decide the matter which is submitted to their decision, but take away the pension altogether. That was so in the case of William Pawley, which on appeal was decided by the court of King's Bench recently. In their decision the Court say that the Local Government Board were wrong in deciding that no pension should be given, where a recommendation for a pension was made by the pension committee and a recommendation for a smaller one by the officer of that committee. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said in this House that that case decided nothing except the particular case of the applicant.

Mr. BIRRELL

No. I considered it did not cover very many cases.

Mr. SCANLAN

I submit that it does cover very many cases; it covers thousands of cases, as I can show, in which the officer differs from the pension committee, not as to whether any pension should be given, but as to the amount of the pension. I say that this decision is wide enough in its terms, and especially the judgment of Lord Justice Cherry, at one time a respected colleague of the Chief Secretary, covers all these cases of this kind. In giving his judgment he says:— In this sense I think that the finding of the committee upon the facts before it cannot at any time be set aside by any Court, or ignored by any Government official. The pension must be paid at the rate awarded until the determination of a question, properly raised under Section 7, which either alters the rate of the pension or may put an end altogether to the right to receive it. In the present ease the question was raised not by the pension officer but by the pensioner. It related only to an increase in the amount of the pension and the claim for an increase was based not upon any alteration in the pensioner's means or even upon any fresh evidence as to the amount of his means at the time the pension was granted, but upon an allegation that the pension committee had erred in calculating the yearly value of those means. Does not that throw a great light on the working of the Act by the Local Government Board, of which the Chief Secretary is supposed to be a member, although he must be a very inactive member, considering all the other duties of his office and considering that there are 8,000 or 10,000 appeals which would have to be submitted to him, and which deserve individual consideration? In these cases no fresh evidence is submitted, and the Local Government Board have taken advantage of having the case before them to absolutely cut people off from the pension. The action of the Local Government Board in that respect is as injudicial as it is scandalous. They ignore the evidence before the committee, and, acting upon no evidence derived from the fact that this person's name is not found in the Census Return of 1841 or 1851, they cut the man off from a pension. I claim that they repeatedly have done that, and this is a policy for which the Local Government Board and the Chief Secretary are responsible for their action in a great many cases like this. They do not even give the poor, unfortunate people the opportunity of knowing or having a statement of the grounds on which the decision is based. Under the whole circumstances of the working of the Act and its unfairness, I submit again that the time has arrived when a Committee with powers of investigation should be appointed. I have no doubt that this suggestion will be met by the Chief Secretary or the Secretary to the Treasury saying that the ordinary courts of justice exist for the settlement of claims of this kind. I find that this poor person, Pawley, who was in the first place found to be entitled to a pension, was not given the expenses of this costly appeal; but a person who had occupied high office under the Government, and who had drawn a comfortable salary while in the occupation of that position on the Treasury Bench or in the Army or Civil Service would no doubt be in a position if his pension were challenged to fight the matter in a court of law, but to invite a person in circumstances of poverty to go to the courts and get the question decided is a cruel mockery in view of the costs of litigation. The costs of litigation are nothing to right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench, but they are utterly impossible to a starving peasant in the West of Ireland or the old people in a town who are applicants for a pension. I therefore maintain that a case has been made out for a full inquiry, and that the maladministration of the Act and the way which it has been worked justify such an inquiry, and until such an inquiry is held and has reported its conclusions to this House I am satisfied that the people of Ireland will have no confidence in the honesty and straightforwardness of the administration of the Old Age Pensions Act in Ireland.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

So far from disagreeing with the two hon. Members who have addressed the House, I quite recognise the difficulty that they find if they desire to seek information from my colleague the Chief Secretary for Ireland and from myself of knowing to whom the particular question should be addressed. I sympathise with them in that difficulty, but it does not follow that because there is this division of responsibility in this House that the administration of the Act has been badly or remissly carried out, or that the benefits which have been conferred by the Act upon the pensioners in Ireland have not been great, and, indeed, surprisingly satisfactory. There has been, I think, an allegation by both hon. Gentlemen who have addressed the House that the pension committees have far too little authority, and they are apt to find their views overridden by the pension officers. Of course, that is not the case. The duties of the pension officers and pension committees are quite separate, and in no way overlap, and their responsibilities are to different authorities. The duty of the pension officer is, first of all, to investigate and report the facts to the committee and inform them whether the claimant for the pension fulfils certain statutory requirements, and whether he is free from certain statutory disqualifications, and I only to recommend to the pension committee the amount of pension which ought to be awarded. When he has done that his duty ceases. The pension committee, on the other hand, is, in the words of the Act, the final authority for the purpose of deciding what the amount of the pension should be, and whether or not any pension should be granted. In that matter they are perfectly free to accept the recommendations of the pension officer or to reject them. If they and the pension officer are in agreement as to the facts of the case and the amount of pension to be granted, the whole matter is closed, but if the pension officer is dissatisfied with the decision of the pension committee, or if the claimant is dissatisfied with the award, they both have a right of appeal to the Local Government Board, and I think hon. Gentlemen who address this House from Ireland on this subject often forget that the appeal is made against the decision of the committee on account of the smallness of the pension awarded, I do not say as frequently, but still very frequently, and it is not only appeals by the pension officer against the decision of the committee which come before the Local Government Board. It has been stated by both hon. Gentlemen who have addressed the House that there has been a considerable amount of hardship inflicted upon pensioners who have already received their pensions, by appeals instituted by the pension officers. I do not suppose either of them pretends that if the pension officer is aware of facts which disentitle the claimant to a pension, he should not bring those facts to the notice of the pension authority. That may be taken as common ground between us.

Mr. CULLINAN

It is disputed. New facts.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

No, it is not a new fact. It may be either a new fact or a fact which was unknown to the pension committee or the pension officer, although it existed at the time.

Mr. GINNELL

It may be a mere negative fact, such as the absence of the name from the Census Return.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I do not think that is so at all. In the view which I have stated I am supported by the Attorney-General and by the Chief Secretary, who is himself a lawyer of no mean repute.

Mr. CULLINAN

In the case of maintenance where no alteration in the circumstances whatever has occurred, how can you justify a revision of the case and a reduction of the pension from 5s. to 2s.?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I am afraid I cannot accept that view, nor do my colleagues, who are more immediately concerned with the general administration of Ireland, and they are, from a legal standpoint, better fitted than I am to consider the evidence and pronounce their opinion upon it. I am only dealing with that part of the matter which concerns the Treasury in the administration of the Act by the pension officers. A great deal has been made of the fact that a much too free use of the Censuses of 1841 and 1851 has been made in arriving at the evidence upon which these pensions are claimed. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scanlan) complained that I was unduly unwilling to give information as to the instructions issued to pension officers in this matter. It is quite true that I am unwilling, because I should be departing from precedent were I to communicate the confidential instructions given to our officers. I am perfectly willing to state what were the general instructions given in the matter. In September, 1908, instructions were issued to the pension officers that in all claims for pensions they were to refer to Censuses of 1841 and 1851, unless they were supported by documentary evidence. It is quite clear, in view of the advice given by hon. Members from Ireland to the Irish people, that if these instructions had been rigidly adhered to there must have been a great congestion in the grant of pensions. There was an enormous number of claims put forward—some hundreds of thousands— there was a comparatively short time in which to work these claims off, and it was clearly to the advantage of the pensioners themselves that there should have been some relaxation of the strictness of these considerations, and accordingly in November, 1908, that relaxation was permitted, and in further and new instructions, which were clearly intended to be of a purely temporary character, the pension officers were told that this reference to the Census Returns might be dispensed with in those cases where the parish clergy were prepared to give a certificate that they had satisfied themselves that the claimants were over seventy years of age, and if the pension officer was himself also primâ facie satisfied that the claimant appeared to be of the age of seventy, the necessity for referring to the Censuses was dispensed with. I do not suppose any hon. Member will for a moment say that was not a proper temporary provision to make. I am quite certain no hon. Gentleman from Ireland ought to complain of the Treasury acting in this manner. I lay great stress on the fact that this was a temporary provision.

It was clearly not a proper provision under the ordinary circumstances of granting pensions, and, accordingly, as soon as we cleared off the great block of pensions arising at the beginning of 1909, these temporary provisions were cancelled, and ever since that the pension officers have been working under the instructions of September, 1908, and they are so working to this day.

But in consequence of the temporary provisions of November, 1908, it was clear that an unusual state of things had arisen. A great number of pensions had been granted which could be, and were subsequently, substantiated by the Censuses. There was also a considerable number of cases of pensions granted where the grantees were untraceable in the Censuses; and, thirdly, there were those cases which, when they were traced, were found not to be qualified for a pension, and clearly each of these three classes of pensions required and received second treatment. Those whose claims were substantiated naturally got their pension. With regard to those who were untraceable, the attitude taken up was this. The pension officer reported the fact to the pension committee, and said, according to the interpretation of the law, no pension ought to be granted. If the pension committee accepted that view, of course nothing further was or needed to be done; but if the pension committee took the view that in a case of that kind a pension ought to be granted, and the pension officer himself thought the appearance of the claimant such that he really was entitled to a pension, although his name could not be traced in the Census, then he acquiesced with the pension committee, and the matter rested there, and the man got his pension. If, on the other hand, the claimant's appearance led the pension officer to doubt the fact that he was really seventy years of age, an appeal was taken in the ordinary course to the Local Government Board, and their decision settled the question.

Then there remained the question of those pensioners who are called "certificated pensioners." Some of them, undoubtedly, were properly and duly qualified; but in a great number of cases—one would do the same thing oneself in the circumstances—the inclination was to help people to get pensions for old friends, who were perhaps on the border line of seventy, but whose ages might be on one side or the other.

Mr. SCANLAN

I would like to know if the right hon. Gentleman is to be understood as making the insinuation that clergymen in Ireland, irrespective of the merits of the case, recommended people for pensions just because they wanted to treat them as old friends?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I should have thought that no one who listened to what I said would have thought that I made any such insinuation. I said that they acted as I myself would have acted, namely, in cases where there was doubt they gave the reasonable benefit of the doubt to the claimant. I think the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scanlan) himself would have taken that course. I do not blame the clergymen in Ireland, or any one else, in that matter; but it was quite clear, in the circumstances, that a review of those cases was necessary. What happened? No question—I use the word question in the technical sense—was raised in the case of those persons the Censuses showed to be two years of age in 1841 or twelve years of age in 1851, and showed to be one year in 1841 or eleven years in 1851. I lay stress on the "and" in consequence of circumstances I propose to allude to later on. The allowances which were made by these considerations enabled an enormous number of persons to be accepted as qualified for pensions to whom, perhaps, some objection might be taken and sustained. Therefore, in this class of persons very great consideration is shown to would-be pensioners and successful claimants in Ireland to whose claims objection might have been made and sustained.

I want to say a word about the Censuses of 1841 and 1851. Both of these were made under special Acts. The Commissioners and enumerators appointed under these Acts were paid persons. It has often been suggested in this House that a policeman and a local publican sat down together, and while talking over their refreshments agreed what was to be the ages of the various persons included in the Census. That is not the information I have received, and I have made some very careful inquiries on this point. These are not the circumstances connected with the enumeration of the people in these two Censuses. The Commissioners were very careful in their choice of enumerators; the Press and the public generally had been induced to take an active and intelligent interest in the enumeration of the people of Ireland. The enumerators themselves were bound under very heavy penalties to make no false returns, and any person who made false or misleading statements in the Census returns were liable to prosecution. There was, therefore, every inducement for the enumerator to make accurate statements as to age and number of family, and there was no inducement to give anything but true and accurate information. But there was this circumstance in connection with both of those Censuses. There is no doubt that an examination of the Censuses will show that persons making returns were very apt to round off the ages. Persons of twenty-eight might be returned as thirty, and persons of forty-seven or forty-eight might be returned as fifty. That is clearly traceable in the case of the older persons whose ages are recorded in the Censuses. But when you come down to children of one, two and three, both in the Census of 1841 and that of 1851, the ages are accurately and carefully given, though not in months or years. A child of eleven months was returned as one year old.

Mr. HUGH LAW

May I ask how the ages of the children so returned in 1841 were returned in 1851?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

That is precisely the point I am coming to. The moment you come to children of seven or eight years of age the same tendency to round off occurs, so that while in the Census of 1841 the age of a child of one, two, three or four is accurately given, the age of the same child is apt to appear in the Census of 1851 as ton, twelve or fourteen years of age, so that though in the Census of 1851 the ages of children of one, two, three and four are accurately recorded, there is a tendency again to round off the ages of older children. It is the remembrance of these facts which induce the pension officers to lay great stress upon, and to give great advantage to claims by persons whose ages can be traced in 1841 and 1851. Where the Census of 1851 shows that a person is ineligible to claim a pension, and the same person is shown in the Census of 1841 as eligible, they gave that person the preference shown by the 1841 Census. These are very important facts in dealing with these questions to which justice has not been done by hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Now I come to the question of the calculation of means. It has been suggested that pension officers have unfairly and unduly over-estimated the means of would-be pensioners. No general instructions have been issued to pensions officers in regard to the calculation of means. What has happened has been this: Each officer has acted as far as possible upon his own discretion. He has been told that in all difficult and uncertain cases he must make reference to the Board and upon the decisions in these individual cases as they came up, there has been built up a course of action which has begun to guide the views of pension officers in calculating the means of applicants for pensions. Even at this moment this general line of conduct is not universally followed. Pension officers still act, and as I think properly act, upon their own judgment and discretion. But they are guided, and again I think naturally and properly guided, by the general decisions which have taken place over the whole of Ireland in a great number of cases.

Then a further attack has been made on the mode of assessing what are called farmers' profits. Reference has been made to the reports of the Controller and Auditor-General of this year. At the outset before the Act came into operation, while preparations were being actually made for its operation, it is quite true that fanners' profits were assessed by a rough-and-ready means of taking three times the value of the rent. But before the Act itself has actually come into operation, and therefore before these calculations could become operative, that system, which was obviously unfair to everybody concerned, as it overestimated in some cases and underestimated in others, had been done away with. In November, I think, of 1908, a new system was introduced, by which the actual incomings and outgoings of the individual farmer were inquired into by the pension committee, and the calculation was made upon that. But this again was not found to be a satisfactory system. Farmers in Ireland are for the most part very small holders. They do not keep accounts, and there is no possible way of arriving actually at the total income and outgoings; and clearly that system had to be abandoned. So finally, in April, 1909, a new system was introduced, which obtains at the present moment, by which calculations were made upon the acreage of the land and the value of the crops upon each portion of the land. These were all referred to what I believe is known as Purdon's Almanack, which I understand is accepted by all agriculturists in Ireland as giving a very fair calculation of the profits and values of crops grown there. And it is upon these tables that calculations at the present day as to farmers' profits are made. There is a reference made in this Controller and Auditor-General's Report in which he says that a rough and ready method was set up of assessing the profits at three times the rent or four times the annuity payable under the Land Purchase Act, and he goes on to say that the same method still obtains. So it does in certain isolated cases. But these isolated cases have only lately been brought to the knowledge of the Board of Customs and Excise, and pension officers are under instructions in no case any longer to adopt that method, but that they are to proceed on the lines which I have just indicated to the Committee.

Mr. CULLINAN

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, when he says that profits are estimated from Purdon's Almanack, that pension officers make the estimate of profit, but make no allowance whatever for the cost of feeding stuffs needed for the feeding of calves, pigs, and fowls? That is how it is done. I am aware of hundreds of cases in which the estimate of the profits is made, but there is no estimate of the expenditure.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I am informed that not only is not that the case, but that allowance is made for these expenses and also for the cost of cultivation. I would further remind the hon. Gentleman that even supposing that that is not so, the pension committee is not bound to accept the calculations of the pension officers and that they can make their own estimate. After all, they are local people, acquainted with the local circumstances of the case and the local value of the crops, and they can make their own estimates as to the exactness, or otherwise, of these calculations put before them.

Mr. CULLINAN

In every case we got an expert valuation made, which was completely ignored by the pension officers and the Local Government Board, so that there is no use in having this sort of nonsense thrown down our throats.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

It is not nonsense.

Mr. CULLINAN

It is pure, unadulterated nonsense in the administration of the Act in Ireland. I know what I am speaking about.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

These cases are not as the hon. Gentleman in his heat represents.

Mr. CULLINAN

I know it.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

As I have pointed out to the Committee, and as is well known, calculations based upon those tables in Purdon's Almanack are accepted generally by the agricultural community as a basis of the calculations of the value of crops. There is only one other point with which I wish to deal. There has been a statement made, I think by the hon. Member for North Sligo (Mr. Scanlan), that the administration of this Act had resulted in grave injustice to Ireland. At the time of the Census of 1901 there was no idea of the Pensions Act in the air, and there was no reason why persons should either understate or overstate their age, and at that time there were 152,000 persons who, if they had been living today, would all of them have been qualified, on their own admissions, for an old age pension.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

By age alone

Mr. SCANLAN

By Census evidence of age alone.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

By their own statement of their own age.

Mr. SCANLAN

In the Census, of course.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

It is a little curious, notwithstanding that return of their own ages, which was made less than nine years ago, that there should be no fewer than 183,000 persons today drawing pensions, or 30,000 more than the number who would have been entitled upon their own statement nine years ago to such pensions. I do not wish to press that fact for more than it is worth, but at all events it shows that the result of the administration of the Act has been to put in possession of pensions of a very satisfactory character a great number of people in Ireland to whom, I believe, this Act has brought great happiness and great contentment. The hon. Member also dealt with the question of an appeal against the decision of the courts in Ireland in reference to the Pawley case. There were two other cases. It was represented that the persons interested in this case were poor persons, unable to carry their case beyond the court of first instance. I think the hon. Member for Tipperary said he was unable to get an answer from the Chief Secretary or from the Secretary to the Treasury on this matter. The consideration of these cases takes a certain amount of time; the pros and cons have to be con- sidered, and it is not always easy to give an answer on the same day, or even within a week of the time when the question is originally put. My right hon. Friend and I have been in conference together on this matter, and I have told him that the Treasury is perfectly willing in the Synnott case, in which judgment was in favour of the Treasury, and which is a more important cases than the Pawley, covering a larger number of instances, to pay all the costs of an appeal from that judgment, and I hope that this concession by the Treasury will prove acceptable. After all, our desire is to arrive only at what is a fair, proper, and right decision of all the points involved in the matter, which is of great importance both to the Treasury and to the pensioners in Ireland. In agreeing to bear all the costs of the appeal we will make it perfectly possible for these poor people to carry their views to a higher tribunal than is at present possible for them, and I think that will be a satisfactory course to adopt.

Mr. JOSEPH NOLAN

I desire to assure the House that neither I nor any other of my colleagues desire to approach this question in a spirit of carping criticism. We do not deny that the Act itself is wise, just, and beneficient, and that it has done a great deal for poor people, who have attained the age of seventy years and upwards in Ireland. I wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that in the administration of the Act a great deal of hardship is inflicted on these poor people. My hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary, in his able and exhaustive statement, and speaking from full knowledge of the way in which the Act works all over Ireland, drew attention to the fact that no fewer than 10,000 old people, who ought to be in receipt of pensions from the country, have been deprived of them. And there is the feeling all over Ireland that the Act is not being administered fairly; and there is also the impression that the harshness with which it is being administered is largely owing to the clamour that was raised in this country by unthinking and ill-informed people, who took into account the estimate that had been made that £700,000 would be sufficient to cover the cost of working the Act in Ireland. They were surprised, appalled as it were, at the fact that it required more than £2,000,000 to satisfy the old age pensioners in that country. It has already been pointed out in this House that this clamour, this outcry against the administration of the Act in Ireland, was based upon an utter misapprehension, the conditions being entirely dinerent in that country from what they are here. In Ireland we are dealing with old people who at the time they were children lived in a country where the population was about eight or nine millions, while in this country the population was about fifteen millions, so that from an easy calculation it will be found that there ought to be something like about half as many old people in Ireland as in this country. But there is one aspect of the question which I think has not been referred to, and that is what might be called the local conditions, and the character of the population. It is well known to anyone who is acquainted with the state of affairs in Ireland that, owing to the operation of laws enacted by this House, and powers given to certain people called landlords, that tens of thousands of acres of the best land were swept bare of people, and that the great mass of the poorer people in the country were driven on to the hillsides and into the bogs to try and eke out a living. That state of things prevails to a very large extent at the present time. Within a very short distance of the chief town in my own Constituency w have ranches of thousands of acres in extent, and, naturally enough, the population there being infinitesimal, will not compare with the population in the crowded districts in the very poorest parts of the country.

The poor conditions in which people in Ireland are forced to live are such that the children of the Irish race when they go abroad are so impressed by the terrible conditions under which those they leave behind have to live that they send back to their native land what are regarded, under the circumstances, as huge sums of money every year. Not long ago I was reading the report of an address delivered by a well-known Irishman in America to a society made up of commercial men, in which he pointed to the fact that from the United States £10,000,000 is sent to Ireland annually. I have heard it stated by one hon. Member in this House that £4,000,000 per annum is sent from the United States to Ireland from one source alone. Those of us who are acquainted with the circumstances know that the Irish abroad send small sums of money which, in the aggregate, amount to a very large sum. What we hold is that the old people in Ireland should not be a drag upon their children, who have to meet the keen competition of the world and make their way, but that the people who live and work in the old country ought to be provided for in their old age. So much with regard to the general question. A reference has been made to the farmers committees. That is a question which has been under consideration in my Constituency, and I have had communications from some pension committees composed of practical farmers, who live in the neighbourhood, and who from their boyhood have been living by agriculture. When they make an estimate as to the profits upon farming it is something like an outrage for some official, with no training and no experience in such matters, to coolly take an almanack or something of that sort in his hand, and say, "These estimates are made by local people, and they are entirely wrong. I shall make my calculations from figures from another source." What the members of the pension committees in various parts of Ireland complain of is that their representations are set aside as if they were of no value.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary will succeed in impressing upon the Treasury the facts of the case, and have such instructions sent to their subordinates in Ireland as will lead them to deal with this great question in a manner which will give satisfaction to the people. Many Acts of Parliament have been passed in this House with regard to Ireland. Some of them have had a very damaging effect. Some of them were intended for the purpose of taking away the properties and, in some cases, the lives of the people of Ireland, and some of them were well intended, but they worked disastrously because of the way in which they were administered. As far as this particular Act is concerned, it has come upon the people of Ireland in such a way as to do more good from the Imperial point of view than anything that has been done in the six or seven hundred years that have elapsed since the Anglo-Norman connection with Ireland commenced. Beneficent as the Land Acts have undoubtedly been, they were passed after a fierce fight between the people and the authorities, after blood was spilled, men sent into penal servitude and suffered various terms of imprisonment, and many men practically ruined. Those Acts were in many cases cut up in another place in such a way as to deprive our people of the benefit which were intended to be conferred by this House. As far as the Old Age Pensions Act is concerned, it is freely admitted upon all sides, by all manner of people in Ireland, that it has been given, so to speak, freely, without any pressure being brought to bear upon this House, and it has been received in a spirit of gratitude. The Act is regarded in Ireland as imperfect. It has failed for those receiving medical relief or outdoor relief. There are many cases of that kind, but the people are willing to wait until better times come for an amendment of the Act. In the matter of the administration of the Act, I would ask any hon. or right hon. Gentleman on the other side of the House is it worth while to spoil a great Act of this kind lest by any chance some poor old beaten-down creature who happened to be a year or two or three years under the period of the Act should manage to get a pension. I thoroughly endorse what has been said by the hon. Member for Tipperary that the pension committees in Ireland are fully alive to the situation. They have no desire whatever to impose upon the Treasury. They want to work the Act fairly and honourably, and I do believe that the Treasury would be well advised to instruct their subordinates to meet the pension committees, and have this great and beneficent Act worked in a way that will give comfort to many people who are now deprived of its utility.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

I am quite sure that no one, not even the Government, will find any fault with the tone and temper of the speech of the hon. Member who has just spoken. I do not rise to traverse his arguments or to pursue the same line of argument. In his general statement. I suppose, there would be complete unanimity in all sections of the House. Take the Act for what it is, with all its merits and all its imperfections, we, all of us, would desire that those who, by the terms of the Act, are entitled to a pension, should obtain it with the least trouble, and with the smallest amount of disagreeable inquisition into their means that is compatible with administration of the Act. We must take the Act as it stands. We must not, under cover of the Act conferring pensions on certain people, pay the pensions to people who do not fulfil the conditions, for that is, not merely a breach of the law, but it is, in fact, an illegitimate drain upon the resources which alone are available for the general purposes of the State, and, amongst others, for any pos sible extension of the Act to a wider circle of beneficiaries. I do not propose to follow the hon. Members' case, because I frankly admit I have no special knowledge of the case which they are raising in regard to the administration of the Act in Ireland, and because it seems to me, also, that this House of Commons is not a tribunal which can investigate or form any valuable opinion upon individual cases such as I have heard named before the House by some of the hon. Gentlemen from Ireland who have spoken. But perhaps it is a better House from that point of view than it would be if there were more Members present, and as there is such a sparse attendance. We cannot try individual cases in this House. You cannot really get the whole of the circumstances before you and the House is not the form of tribunal which could form a judgment upon it. I do not wish, therefore, to follow the speeches from the Irish Benches.

I rise to ask the Government a question on a matter which arises directly upon this Debate, and is of some importance for the future. It is evident that the Census Returns have acquired a new importance. Hitherto they have afforded statistical information valuable for many scientific and sociological purposes; but, apart from the natural reluctance of some people to confess their age because it might interfere with their prospects of employment or on other grounds, there has been no possible reason, as far as I know, for anyone deliberately to falsify the returns; and on the whole probably, for the purpose for which they have been used, the returns were sufficiently accurate. But now that the Census is being used as material though not conclusive evidence—

Mr. BIRRELL

We do not rely on the Census. In Ireland the registration of births did not come into operation until 1864, and that is why we are thrown back so much on the Census all over the country. We should not rely on the returns of the next Census; we should go to Somerset House and find the registration of birth.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

If the registers of births date back long enough for the next Census to be immaterial for this purpose, my question falls to the ground.

Mr. BIRRELL

They do in England, but not in Ireland.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Then the next Census is still material for pension purposes in Ireland. The Government will find itself in a rather invidious and awkward position if they have accepted a great mass of unsifted evidence as to age in the Census Returns, and then, having tabulated those returns, they reject the evidence when it is a question of paying pensions.

Mr. BIRRELL

We have never rejected the Census in Ireland. Where the Census shows that a person is seventy without any question he receives a pension.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Does the Government propose to proceed on that basis with the Census of 1911? Assuming that we are all anxious to get at the truth and to pay every pension that is due, but not to accept claims that are bad—I will not say fraudulent, as sometimes they are merely mistaken—it becomes a matter of some importance how the next Census is carried out. As the Secretary to the Treasury said just now, when the last Census was made there was no prospect of old age pensions being dependent upon the answers then given. Now, unless we have reached the point at which the register of births dates back seventy years, the Census Return is very serious evidence, and, according to the Chief Secretary, has hitherto been accepted as conclusive evidence. Are you going to accept it as conclusive evidence in future? I do not think you can unless, you test the returns at the time they are made with much more care than you have hitherto done. I do not press the Government for an immediate answer, but I draw attention to the matter because it becomes a very material point. You cannot in future accept the Census Returns as conclusive evidence as to age; if you do you will put a premium on false returns.

Mr. BIRRELL

That is rather an interesting question. With regard to young children, there is really no fear of people entering a child wrongly in the hope that in sixty-five or seventy years hence that child will get 5s. The register of births is, of course, much better, but as regards young children a house-to-house visitation is very good evidence. But when you get to the more dangerous ages there is uncertainty, and I do not think that the Census, however conducted, would always be good primâ facie evidence.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

I entirely agree. I do not think there is any danger as to children being entered wrongly in the hope of their getting a pension sixty-five years instead of sixty-eight years hence. When you have a satisfactory system of registration of births the Census will become immaterial for this purpose. It is only in regard to people who are already oldish, if not actually old, that it is important. Hitherto there has been a tendency for the Census to show a smaller proportion of old people than would have been expected from an examination of the previous Census. That is to say, ten years having elapsed between one Census and another, you are surprised to find that a great number of people have not aged ten years in the interval. Now, if you are to rely on the Census, the tendency must be the other way, and instead of people growing five years older in ten years, according to the returns, they will grow fifteen years older.

Mr. BIRRELL

You must trace them in the earlier Census.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

You have to check them. I think it is worth while checking the returns at a very early point, because that would be far less invidious than to do so later, and then, having recorded the returns, to dispute them when a pension became payable. If you do that you will create or give colour to the idea that you are disputing your own figures, because they involve you in a greater payment than you wish to make, and that it is merely because you have to put your hands into your pocket that you dispute the evidence. I do not put this forward in any party spirit. It is quite as likely to inure to the benefit of other Governments than the present. But in the interests of the Government themselves, and in order to carry public opinion with them in these matters, now that there is a special reason for having the information correct, and a special inducement to some people to give it incorrectly, a little more trouble should be taken than hitherto to see that the information is accurate.

Mr. HUGH LAW

I should like to acknowledge the concession made by the Financial Secretary in announcing that the Treasury were prepared to pay the costs of the appeal to the Courts. That will be valuable as far as it goes, though I understand that it does not cover all the field, and that it will be necessary for other points also to be brought up for review.

So that we cannot regard that as closed. But I should like to acknowledge the concession made. That some 8,000 or 10,000 pensions have been taken away in Ireland up to 31st December last may appear to some people to give colour to the suggestions which have been made of fraudulent dealings in the case of Irish pensions. We all remember in the early part of last year the great outcry that arose when it became evident that the number of pensions granted in Ireland was greatly in excess of those which might have been expected on the basis of the then population of Ireland. People altogether forget that the true basis of comparison was not the population of to-day, but the population of seventy years ago, when these people were born. The point is exceedingly well brought out in a reply which the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury gave to the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Meath the other day. From this it appears that if you go back to 1839, when pensioners, whether in Great Britain or Ireland, were born, and if you compare the population then with the number of pensions in each country now, you will find that, so far from Ireland having a greater proportion of pensioners to the population of that day than Great Britain, she actually has less. While, of course, the population of Great Britain has practically doubled in the seventy years, that of Ireland has gone to half—from 8,000,000 to 4,000,000. If you take the percentage of pensioners living in Ireland today with the population in Ireland when these people were born, and you take the similar pensioners of Great Britain and compare them with the population then living in Great Britain, you will find that, so far from Ireland having too many pensioners on that basis, she has fewer.

I pass from that, for there, are matters of much more importance to be dealt with. But we certainly do not stand here—and I have just heard something like a suggestion of that in Debate—to justify fraud, nor do we stand here to say that in no circumstances whatever may a pension ever be revised. It must be perfectly clear that if, for example, it should happen that the means of a pensioner should be very greatly increased after the granting of the pension, that it would be absurd to suggest that that pension should never afterwards be taken away. I saw a case the other day in the newspapers in which a widow, who had been in receipt of poor relief, came into the fortune of something like £20,000. No one would contend in a case like that that a revision was not necessary. But fraud and change of circumstance are accountable for a microscopical proportion of the total number of these 8,000 or 10,000 cases. By far the larger proportion of these cases are those of old people, who, as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has described, are on the border line, and in the absence of registration of births and of parish registers going back many years, themselves are in ignorance, and have no actual knowledge of their own age. Now those people, in December or January of A year ago, came before the local committee, and offered such evidence as they could, and the local committee seeing them face to face, knowing their families and their circumstances, became satisfied that they were entitled to pensions, and the pension officer in these cases agreed. In some cases the pension was issued with the concurrence of the pension officer, and continued to be paid from January until, perhaps, October or November. Then suddenly a question was raised, and the pension was taken away. In some cases the pension, by some process which I cannot understand, was subsequently restored, and again a second question was raised, and it was again taken away. I have known several cases of that sort.

Mr. BIRRELL

On age?

Mr. HUGH LAW

Yes.

Mr. BIRRELL

dissented.

Mr. HUGH LAW

How that change came about I think is very clear. The Secretary to the Treasury made reference in his speech to regulations which were sent out by the Board of Inland Revenue. He did not quote from these documents, and though I hold them in my hand I shall not do so either. But there are one or two material points which the hon. Gentleman did not refer to which yet, I think, should be known. In the circular of 1st November, to which he referred, and which authorised pension officers, in considering the evidence of age, to accept the certificate of the parish priest, there is nothing whatever—I am quite willing to read it if necessary—of a temporary nature. The right hon. Gentleman said the arrangement was obviously, and evidently, of a temporary nature. I can find nothing in the circular to suggest that it was to be regarded otherwise than a matter of regular procedure; and it did not as a matter of fact pass out of being in the natural way, as the hon. Gentleman seems to suggest. What really happened was that, by a later circular of 3rd February of last year, new instructions were sent to pension officers, and they were told that where claimants could not give the proper particulars, the pension officer was directed to state to the court that "no evidence of age had been produced, and that the claim could not properly be allowed." That seems to me to dispose of the suggestion that this was only intended as a temporary provision, having merely to fulfil its use, and then to pass, in the course of nature, out of existence.

I should like to refer to one or two other matters raised by the Secretary to the Treasury. He said that it was the custom of the authorities to, as I understand, rely in the ordinary way chiefly upon the Census of 1841, rather than the Census of 1851, and for reasons which I think are good reasons. Let me say that there have been some curious instances to the contrary. I have heard of particular cases, which an hon. Gentleman has given to me since this Debate began, where the Census of 1841 shows a claimant to have been three years of age at that time, but where, for some reason, by the Census of 1851, she is represented as being now only sixty-seven years of age. The Census of 1851, which is to the detriment of the applicant, has been preferred to the Census of 1841, which was to her advantage. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury said, as I understood him, that there were cases where the claimant was not found in the Census Return at all, but that if the pension committee were of opinion that the pension should be granted, and the pension officer satisfied himself, on seeing the claimant, that the pension ought to be granted, no further difficulty was raised. It has been pointed out to me that there have been cases in which the pension officer was so satisfied that the claimant fulfilled the statutory conditions, and where he has stated in his written report that there was no doubt of age, yet when that pension officer, after a lapse of a year, was removed to another district and another pension officer came in his place, the case was reopened on the very same ground as had been raised before. I want just to say a word as to the leading cases of Pawley and Synnott. As I understand it, the Synnott case would be conclusive against the claimant. On the face of it it seems the rule that there is a right either in the pension officer to raise, and in the pension committee and the Local Government Board to reconsider, again a case that had been once settled. I am very glad that that is to be appealed against. It is quite clear from certain of the judgments in the Pawley case, that, to say the least of it, the matter is open to very grave doubt. Lord Justice Holmes says:— I notice that the Lord Chief Baron in coming to the same conclusion, seems to have been of opinion that there can be no reconsideration of an order granting or refusing a pension, unless it can be shown that there has been a change of circumstances after the order has been made‥‥ This is an important question which it is not necessary to decide in this case, and as to which I shall keep my mind open if it arises hereafter, but I have referred to it to prevent it being thought that it is involved in my decision of this appeal. The claim of the pension officer opened up a very important question, which it is not necessary to decide in this case, and as to which I shall keep an open mind if it arises in the future. Lord Justice Cherry said:— I guard myself, as other members of the court have done, from expressing any opinion upon the argument which was pressed so strongly upon us, that there is no jurisdiction to deprive a man of a pension once granted unless some evidence is given of a change in his circumstances after the award of the pension‥‥The question involved is one, however, which we are not called upon to determine in the present case, and we accordingly leave it open for future discussion and determination. I am very glad it is to be brought up again. It seems to me to be exceedingly cruel, and I think the Local Government Board ought to be extremely careful while this matter is still in dispute, and seeing how doubtful such eminent judges as the Lord Chief Baron, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Justice Holmes, and Lord Justice Cherry were as to the state of the law, as to how they act. I think it is nothing short of a scandal that the Revenue authorities, while it has not been legally determined whether these pensions have been legally withdrawn at all or not, and whether they are not at this moment legally payable, should be pursuing hundreds of poor people for repayment of the money already paid to them.

3.0 P.M

I know many cases in which that has been done, in which, after a man has been paid without any question, with no allegation of fraud, and where the evidence has been exactly the same as that which was given at the time the pension was granted and where poor people have been paid their pensions for five, six, seven, and eight months, they are now suddenly, because the authorities have become doubtful as to whether the pensions were originally rightly granted to these poor people, faced with the demand for the repayment of sums of £8, £9, £10, or £12. In most cases it would be entirely impossible to repay such sums. Nobody disputes that you have a right to demand money back if it has been improperly paid or if it has been got by fraud, but where a mistake has been made by your own officers, who ought to have made the discovery in time, it seems to me to be monstrous to go and prosecute these poor people in this matter. I join in the appeal made by my hon. Friends, who said, "Do not spoil a great Act. Do not spoil the ship for a ha'porth o' tar?" The Act has been received with real gratitude, and has made an enormous difference in the lives of many poor people. Do not spoil it by raising all sorts of insecurity in cases where there has been no allegation of fraud, and where the mistake has arisen by the fault of the officers of the Government themselves. Surely to do so is to defeat the whole object for which this Act of Parliament was passed. It was intended, of course, that the Statutory conditions should be fulfilled, but once you had satisfied yourself by the best evidence procurable, whatever it might be, that the particular old man or woman should be paid a pension, and that the pension is actually being enjoyed at the time, you cannot without upsetting the whole basis of security, which is a great part of the benefit you desire to confer upon those people, leave it for ever in the hands of the pension officers or the Local Government Board or anyone else to be continually opening the matter up, and threatening them with continual reopening of their cases. If you do so, you do away with the little security they have in the last years of their lives.

Mr. BIRRELL

I am sure nobody will be surprised to hear a Debate in this House upon this subject when we consider what an extraordinary revolution in the lives and happiness of a very large body of the population was created by this Statute. I am sure that none of us want to quarrel over the administration of a beneficent Act. About that there is no doubt. I want the House clearly to understand why I am here at this box at this moment. I am here in my character as President of the Local Government Board. I have nothing whatever to do with the Treasury, I have nothing whatever to do with the Revenue officers, I have nothing whatever to do with the pension officers. I am a court of appeal. A most tremendous duty was imposed by this Act of Parliament upon the Local Government Board. We have had 35,000 appeals, of which I think three or four thousand only are still pending, and we have been called upon to decide difficult and minute questions which are none of our seeking, and so far from desiring to exclude any person from the benefits of the Act if they can really be brought within it, the anxiety of the Local Government Board, if it had any desire for peace and quiet, would be to take the most lenient possible view of all these cases. I asked the House to bear in mind that I am here, as the appellate tribunal, called upon to decide a great number of cases, amounting to 35,000 appeals. They may be divided into two classes—age and means. On the question of age the condition of the Act of Parliament is that you must be seventy years of age, and anybody who cannot prove that does not come within the bounty of this Act at all, and is a mere interloper and intruder. The obligation is upon the person claiming to prove that he or she is seventy years of age. That is a matter of evidence and proof, and when you come to examine it you often find that it is a matter of such evidence as carries reasonable and honest conviction to the mind of the appellate jurisdiction. That jurisdiction has to be satisfied that the person is seventy years of age. In England no very great difficulties arise because of your system of the registration of births. You can get a certificate from Somerset House, and there is an end of the matter, but in Ireland that state of things does not apply. The operation of the register in Ireland did not begin until 1864. As time goes on this difficulty will not longer exist, but at the present moment, and for some years to come, we cannot have in Ireland that easy method of ascertaining how old you are.

It has been supposed that the appellate jurisdiction which I represent has laid down fantastic rules of its own, excluding the best evidence that could be forthcoming as to age, and that it has relied simply upon the Census of 1841. A person who is now seventy years of age will have to have been born in 1840, and would have been one year old when the Census was taken. Now, we have always accepted the entry in the Census of 1841 as proof positive that the person was seventy years of age, and I ask hon. Members from Ireland not to be too critical or sweeping in the censures they pass upon the method in which the Census of 1841 was brought about, because there are hundreds and thousands of people in Ireland who would not have been in possession of pensions at all but for that Census. It was only because they could show a record in the Census of 1841 that they have got the benefit of their 5s. or 3s. or 2s. a week as the case might be. We have not been fully satisfied with the Census of 1841 for the reasons given by my right hon. Friend, which were obvious, but however imperfect it may be as to the ages of persons above fifteen, twenty, thirty or forty years of age, at any rate it is good evidence of the infant inmates of the house when the house to house visitation was taken. Therefore, the Local Government Board has always accepted it, but supposing a person is not recorded there. We have no different rules for them. We do not lay down hard and fast rules as to what is good evidence and what is not. As for baptismal registers, they have not been kept with the same precision that is customary in England, because Ireland is the Christian country, and everybody is supposed to be baptised; therefore, the people have not attached the same value to the keeping of such records that has usually been the case in England. Nevertheless, we are constantly able to procure baptismal registers in Ireland, and when they exist and the certificate is found to be a true and faithful account of their contents, baptismal registers have always been accepted.

In many Nonconformist families in this country, family Bibles were always kept as a record, and have always been received in courts of justice, in the absence of other evidence, as evidence of the age of a person, if entered by the parents at a reasonable date after the event. That practice does not generally exist in Ireland, but I may inform the House that stacks of old Bibles have been forwarded to the Local Government Board in support of the ages of pensioners, and they have been examined, and in a great number of cases accepted. Every kind of evidence, including photographs, has been accepted. Every kind of evidence as to the fact that a pensioner remembers his father and is able to produce evidence as to the death of his father, photographs of the tombstone of his father, and such evidence as that has been accepted when it carries conviction, and scores of pensioners have been admitted upon evidence of that description. Sampler evidence has been produced and accepted in England as evidence of a child's age at a time the sampler was made, and sampler evidence would be accepted as freely in Ireland as in England. As a lawyer, I would not be a party to any regulations which excluded from the purview of the Court of Appeal anything that was reasonable and good evidence. Some hon. Members from Ireland seem to think that when you cannot get good evidence it is a monstrous and wicked thing to exclude bad evidence. We cannot accept bad evidence. We have the highest possible respect for the evidence of the clergy of all denominations, and that kind of evidence. The clergy is often able to produce evidence that the parishioner has attained seventy years of age, but the mere statement that a clergyman believes the person to be seventy years of age cannot be accepted as evidence at all, and it would not be accepted in any court. Besides, a clergyman is not an expert in age. Local knowledge may be excellent and first-rate evidence, but on examination it often proves perfectly delusive, and a thing upon which nobody with any sense of responsibility or any public person could for a moment rely.

Mr. CULLINAN

Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether, in any case where this dispute has arisen, and where the pension committee has testified satisfaction as to the age, the Local Government Board has had a local appeal for investigation, or has it merely accepted the recommendations of the pension officers?

Mr. BIRRELL

A perfect myth has grown up as to the procedure of the Local Government Board. I cannot deal with every particular case, but I am perfectly certain that if the hon. Member would supply me with particular names it can be gone into. Papers in regard to these cases have gone forward and backwards again and again. It has come before the Local Government Board and we have sent it back in order to obtain inspection, and persons have been sent at our request to inquire of the applicants themselves. We have taken as much pains to get the best evidence in these cases as though millions of money were involved. In no case have we shirked our responsibility for getting the best evidence available. I am satisfied the hon. Member would be surprised at the pains that have been taken in all these cases in order to ascertain whether a person is seventy years of age. The Local Government Board in these matters have no connection whatever with the Treasury, and no underground communications with that body; they have been simply animated with the desire, not to save the taxpayer's pocket, but to secure the production of reasonable evidence to prove that the persons applying for the pensions were actually seventy years of age. Then there is the question of means. That, of course, is a matter in which discretion has by Act of Parliament to be exercised. The task of ascertaining whether a poor farmer in the West of Ireland, with ten or fifteen acres of land and a certain amount of live stock, has or has not an income which can fairly be represented in cash as £31 10s., is, I admit, a task which nobody could pretend to discharge with absolute mathematical precision. But in order to carry it out we have had most laborious tables drawn up for all parts of the country. We have certain scales which have been verified as to the value of an acre of land whether it is laid down with potatoes, oats, or barley. A question has been asked about cows. This subject of milch cows has pressed very heavily upon the Local Government Board, and we have had most particular inquiries made in regard to these animals with regard to the value of a cow on prime land, on medium land, on poor land, and even, worst of all, on Achill Island. Then inquiries are made as to the quantity of milk produced at various stages of the animal's career; in fact, there have been the most painstaking observations made in regard to all those particulars. We have as a Department most laboriously worked out this matter in the interests of the Irish people, and in the interests also of the Act of Parliament. We have gone to the extent of estimating the value of the labour expended upon an acre of land, and have made deductions accordingly.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that he has deducted the value of a man's own work in the calculation of means?

Mr. BIRRELL

Yes.

Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

We do not do that in England. In nine cases out of ten the wages are taken into consideration.

Mr. BIRRELL

In considering the net value of a man's income from land, we deduct, all expenses incurred to enable him to produce the result, and whether he employs labour or not we deduct the expense of that labour. In reference to these poor people you really do require very special conditions in deciding whether or not you shall exclude them from pensions, and the difficulty of working out all these minute particulars must be borne in mind. I am not here to pretend that anything more than an honest endeavour has been made to get at the facts. I am only sorry that under the law, as it stands, we are bound to exclude from the benefits of the Act a great number of persons who, in my judgment, are far more within its intentions than those who have already secured the benefit. There is many a poor fellow earning a shilling on the roadside who, being forced to accept poor relief, is excluded from the benefit of the Act, whereas persons who seldom or never feel the pangs of hunger are enabled to get the advantage. Our difficulties have been increased by the habit of the Irish people assigning all their property on marriage to the son or daughter or niece. It is a bonâ fide transaction. It has not been done in order to get pensions, as some people seem to think. It is a well-established Irish custom. I do not believe any case can be brought home in which we have not done our honest best to discharge the most difficult duty cast upon us. The Vice-President has acted with the utmost self-denial in taking on these enormous duties, and he has in difficult cases referred to me. The Department has done its best under all the circumstances, and I am certain that nobody could have carried out the work better. Some people, possibly over seventy years of age, may not have been able to produce evidence satisfactory to us, but that is not our fault. We cannot make evidence; we have to insist upon some standard of evidence being brought forward in order to satisfy us, and I repeat we have done our best to the best of our ability. You have got 183,976 persons in receipt of pensions in Ireland at the present time; that is a fact, at all events. I am not going into the question whether the number should be greater or less. But it is the truth that there has not been any wicked action on the part of the Local Government Board with a view to cutting down the total. I do not want to go into the terrible stories of the famine era. God forbid that for polemical purposes one should refer to so ter- rible an incident in the history of Ireland, an incident which produced the most terrible mortality and reduced the population of Ireland by millions. But the mortality fell largely upon the very young— it was the children who perished, and therefore it would be rash to assume that we are entitled to say that these septuagenarians are the survivors of a population of eight or nine millions. I think, with all the facts and figures before us, we are entitled to say that the Local Government Board have done their best. Any information and any particulars with regard to individual cases which may be forwarded to me I shall be most happy to examine; but I am certain, in regard to all these transactions, that in nine cases out of ten the House will be satisfied that everything possible has been done to deal justly with the applicants.