§ Mr. SHEEHANasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he will state, in the case of claimants for old age pensions who cannot obtain baptismal certificates or who cannot be traced in the Census Returns of 1841 or 1851, what other evidence of age will be required to satisfy the pension officer or the Local Government Board; and must people who are manifestly beyond the prescribed limit of age be penalised for all time if they cannot get the evidence above mentioned?
§ Mr. BIRRELLThe Local Government Board consider very carefully any evidence whatsoever which claimants or pensioners may submit to them, and they place no restrictions whatever on applicants in this respect. In the absence of evidence from the Census or baptismal registers, marriage certificates of claimants or of the birth or baptism of their children often prove useful in establishing age. Family records, such as entries in old Bibles or records of dates of occupation or employment in adult work are frequently produced and satisfy the Board. As regards the concluding paragraph of the question, I would point out that the onus of proof of qualification for a pension rests upon the claimant.
§ Mr. SHEEHANasked the Chief Secretary if he will state the grounds on which the Local Government Board disallowed the pension of Patrick Burns, Gawlane, Donoughmore, county Cork; did the pension officer in his report to the Blarney Sub-committee, dated 10th December, 1908, recommend that this man should get 3s. per week; did the sub-committee decide that he was entitled to 5s.; and, seeing that Burns has only a few acres of reclaimed land, of which he is tenant, and the right to graze a few cows on a mountain, why has his claim not been admitted?
§ Mr. BIRRELLThe Local Government Board inform me that they have disallowed four separate claims made by Burns on the ground that his means exceed the 2305W statutory limit. In arriving at their decisions the Board took into consideration the value of the stock and crops on his holding of eleven statute acres.
§ Mr. SHEEHANasked the Chief Secretary if he can state the grounds on which the Local Government Board decided that Hannah Regan, Kilblafer, Berrings, county Cork, was not entitled to an old age pension; whether he is aware that the Blarney sub-committee, after careful investigation, decided that she was entitled to the full pension; that the pension officer, in his report to the sub-committee, declared that in his opinion the claimant was entitled to 3s. per week; and that the said pension officer estimated her maintenance at 10s. per week, and will it be explained how he arrived at this calculation; and is he aware that Mrs. Regan is living with her son on a small farm of which he is the tenant, and of which the rent is not £10 a year?
§ Mr. BIRRELLThe Local Government Board disallowed Mrs. Regan's claim because they considered that the value of her maintenance on her son's holding of forty acres of good land, together with the privileges and benefits she enjoyed was in excess of the statutory limit.