Old I. R. A. Military Pensions: The Entitled and the Not so Entitled?

upncmnhistori

Why were men not entitled to Old I. R. A. Military Pensions and not entitled?

For e.g My great grandfather was apart of 1916 who applied for military pension (OIRA one) and turned out he was entitled to one despite applying twice. He was put on sentry duty, the railway and stealing fuel from the British Military. I was told by eledery members in my community there were people who were not entitled to it at all and got it anyways. A friend of mine in the Heritage studies told me it was something to do with De Valera and FF. Academics please correct me if I am wrong and explain how people were not entitled to this pension got it?

gobnaitolunacy

Like most things in Irish life a bit of influence/lobbying goes a long way.

Peregrinus

The Free State government brought in the Military Service Pensions Act in 1924. It provided for pensions based on rank, and length of service, with length of service counted back as far as 1916. (The Irish Volunteers were founded in 1913, but between 1913 and 1916 all they did was training and drilling. People got no credit towards pensions for membership between 1913 and 1916.)

If I recall correctly, in order to get a pension under this legislation you had to be demobilised/discharged from the Free State Army. Naturally, if you took the Republican side and never joined the Free State Army, this was an impossible condition to satisfy, so people who took the Republican side in the civil war didn’t get pensions under the 1924 Act. In any event, in 1924 most Republicans were still pursuing an abstentionist/refuse to recognise the state policy, so even if they had been eligible for pensions they wouldn’t have applied for them.

When de Valera came to power in 1932, he passed further legislation (the Military Service Pensions Act 1934) to allow people to claim pensions for service even if they hadn’t joined the Free State Army, and this enabled people who had taken the Republican side in the civil war but had since reconciled themselves to the existence of the Free State to apply for pensions.

Proving that you were entitled, of course, was a bit of an issue. The irregular forces didn’t always keep great records, and what they did have did not always surive. With the passage of time memories about who had done what during the period were beginning to fade. In general, a claimant identified the unit with which he claimed to have served, and the commanding officer(s) that he served under, and he outlined the actions he had taken part in or the other ways in which he had served. The Dept of Defence would then check your story against such records as were available and also by interviewing the claimant’s C.O. and other comrades (or those of them who were prepared to co-operate with the process; it was hard luck on you if they were still irredentist Republicans, refusing to have anything to do with the Free State and all its works and pomps). At the end of it all you either would or would not be awarded a Certificate of Military Service; if you were, you could then apply for a pension.

There was obviously some scope for exploiting the system. People who had been IRA officers could, um, embroider the truth a little to improve the chances that their friends would get pensions and, perhaps, that their enemies wouldn’t. I don’t know to what extent this actually went on, but because there was scope for it to go on there was a certain amount of public cynicism about the whole system. In addition some people still refused, on principle, to recognise the state or apply for pensions and they tended to impute base motives to those who did, and that also helped to foster an impression that the whole process could be a bit shoddy.

The records of pension claims and of investigations into them, incidentally, still survive and are held by the Dept of Defence (unless they have been transferred to the National Archives). They are a valuable source for historians of the period.

As to why your grandfather couldn't get a pension for his service in 1916, I can't say. It was only service during Easter Week 1916 itself that counted, so far as I recall, because basically there were no military operations on foot either before Easter Week or for quite some time afterwards. If you served during Easter Week and were afterwards interned, you got pension credit for the time of your internment, but if you hadn't been out in Easter Week but got interned anyway (because, e.g., you were a member of the Irish Volunteers) then you didn't get pension credit for that.

You say your grandfather was on sentry duty on the railway, and was involved in stealing fuel. Are you sure that was in 1916? It doesn't sound like the kind of thing the Volunteers were doing at the time. 1919-21, possibly.

upncmnhistori

Here is his statements I put up online http://www.patkilleendocuments.blogspot.ie/ please execuse some of the photo's.