§ Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland the grounds on which an old age pension has been withheld from John P. Sullivan, Inchees, Waterville, in view of the fact that the notification from the Registry of Deeds Office ratifying the transfer of his farm was duly forwarded to the Local Government Board?
§ Mr. BIRRELLJohn P. Sullivan in May last assigned a farm of 382 acres to a married son who was a draper in Cahirciveen, and immediately afterwards he made a claim for a pension. The proceeds of the farm so assigned, on which were twenty-two cattle and thirty-three sheep, were worth more than £63 a year in the opinion of the Local Government Board, who accordingly disallowed the claim.
§ Mr. DEVLINasked the Chief Secretary on what grounds an old age pension was refused to Eliza Whiteside, of Lower Whitehouse, Belfast; whether he is aware that the applicant is now eighty years of age, having been baptised in the parish of Killead in 1832; that the local pensions committee granted the pension on the 23rd December, 1910, which was disallowed on the appeal of the pensions officer as, owing to some cause, the name of her uncle William appears in the Testament as that of her father, whose name was William John; and whether he will cause further inquiry to be made with a view to granting the old age pension in this case?
§ Mr. BIRRELLEliza Whiteside's claim was disallowed on the ground that she had not reached the statutory age. The Testament referred to did not contain an entry of the date of claimant's birth, but was produced as evidence of the age and date of death of her mother. The claimant's own age was established by the production of a certificate that she was baptised in St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Belfast, on the 27th August, 1843; so that she is at present only sixty-eight years of age. Her parents' names are correctly given in the certificate as John Whiteside and Marian Ferguson. It was alleged that the entry in the register of Glenavy Protestant Church of the baptism of a child named Eliza Whiteside on the 11th November, 1832, also related to the1176W claimant, it being contended that she was twice baptised, first, when an infant, as a Protestant, and subsequently, when about eleven years old, as a Catholic. The parents, however, of the child baptised in 1832 were named William and Mary Whiteside.