Earliest Provision for Poor

It was ultimately the response of government to poverty that popularised the idea of a pension in old age. However, such response took a very long time. The law in ancient Ireland# imposed a responsibility on the kin group (derbfhine) to care for its members who were insane, aged or suffering from physical disability. The kin group consisted of the descendants through the male line of the same great-grandfather. The Brehon law provided for sick maintenance, which meant that a liability was imposed on individuals to provide support for persons incapacitated by them as a result of an unlawful attack.

Charitable work appeared first in the monasteries and parishes of the church and of the craft guilds of mediaeval times. Later it gradually assumed a contributory or insurance aspect and this meant legislative controls. Powell states :

�Charity which originally meant Christian love in one�s fellow men is traceable in Ireland to mediaeval society. In the mediaeval world alms giving was associated with a mystical belief in assuaging the wrath of the deity through helping the poor.

The Elizabethan poor laws, which charged each parish with the responsibility to provide for its poor instituted the first statutory social service in England; this was usually done through a system of outdoor relief. In 1634 the Parliament of Ireland passed an Act for the erecting of houses of correction and for the punishment of rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars and other lewd and idle persons#. The houses of correction soon fell into disuse and government sought other means of controlling the poor. In 1701 vagrancy was made a transportable offence in Ireland, which meant that any poor homeless person could be transported#. The common law saw a shift of support for those in need from the kin group to the family. This had the effect of creating a class of aged poor in a developing industrialised society.

The Poor Law

The English poor law was never extended to Ireland and it was only when it was replaced in 1834 by the harsh workhouse system of indoor relief that the question of similar provisions in Ireland arose. The Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1838# inaugurated a system of institutional relief of the sick and destitute poor financed by local poor rates and administered locally by specially constituted poor law authorities. This indoor relief was granted in workhouses which were established in each poor law union into which the country was divided.

The aim of the deterrent workhouse system was to force the poor to find work. This created the status of �pauper� which a person became on admission to a workhouse. �The Victorians regarded poverty as a social fact. The poor, they reflected, are always with us, always have been and always will be�. Paupers became second class citizens and was not something to which the Irish would readily aspire, �firstly the loss of personal reputation, secondly, the loss of personal freedom and thirdly, the loss of political freedom by suffering disfranchisement�.

The failure to establish a system of outdoor relief# had drastic consequences during the Famine (1845-1852). The Poor Law# was to remain the main social measure for seventy years until the old age pension was introduced. In 1939 the poor law was revised and renamed �public assistance�. In 1976 it was finally abolished and replaced by supplementary welfare allowance.