This subject of an arbitration board being set up in the Civil Service has been debated in this House on a number of occasions and we have rarely heard the Government view, if the Government has a view on the question, put very clearly. I do not know whether Deputy Corry and Deputy O'Reilly, who have spoken from the Government Benches, are to be taken as expressing the Government view on the matter. If they are, the view, apparently, is that the Civil Service is too well-off. Deputy Corry suggested that it is overpaid. Deputy O'Reilly has just suggested that it enjoys advantages which are not shared by the rest of the community. All that may or may not be so, but even if it is the Government view, it is scarcely the matter now under discussion. So far as the subject-matter of this motion has really been touched upon by speakers from the Government Benches, Deputy O'Reilly's view is that the Civil Service ought to trust the Minister. I think I am not misrepresenting what he said. He said that they may be worse off if they secure the right to endeavour to attain agreement as to their conditions of service, and, failing agreement, to have their rights determined by an arbitration board. That is scarcely the point either.
Surely it is to the advantage of this country that we should have a contented Civil Service, an advantage to this or any country that persons who have to carry on the work of government on the official side should be contented and satisfied. Whether they are right or wrong in considering they have grievances—there are very few bodies of people who have not grievances—surely it would be to the advantage of the country that they should have the opportunity somewhere of airing these grievances in a proper way and having them adjudicated upon. Workers in other spheres of life have, in default of other methods of settling their grievances, to resort to what may be called direct action—the strike, and weapons of that kind. It is certainly not at present to be contemplated that the civil servants in this country will contemplate such steps to remedy their grievances. But such a state of affairs might come to pass, or, even if it did not come to pass, a situation might easily arise in which suppressed grievances, not vented in that way, might cause grave damage to the fabric of the service.
I think it is only reasonable that this House should express the view that it would be advisable that there should be done here what is done in other countries, and that this large body of important people, performing most important work in the State, should have, if not a voice in the political affairs of the country, at least some opportunity of having their grievances ventilated, adjudicated upon and determined in a proper way. It is no remedy to say that they can trust the Minister. I suppose the Civil Service has many advantages, but undoubtedly there are individual and class grievances. Undoubtedly, individual civil servants and classes of civil servants have been harshly and hardly treated, and they have had no opportunity of having those grievances aired, ventilated and adjudicated upon.
Apart from all that, it is a new point of view for the Government, if it is the Government point of view— we have not heard the Minister for Finance, although this debate has gone on for a considerable time—that there should not be that arbitration, negotiation, agreement if possible, and, failing agreement, a proper arbitration tribunal to determine rights. The situation undoubtedly is that in the year 1932, at a time when the Fianna Fáil Party were seeking the suffrages of the country, in the most unequivocal terms the President of the Executive Council, as he was assumed to be, made a solemn and deliberate promise to the country in general and to the Civil Service in particular that, if returned to power he would provide arbitration machinery. That is undoubted: it has never been denied and cannot be denied.
Apart from that announcement made by the President about-to-be, it is common knowledge that the Fianna Fáil programme or plan, as set out in placards and notices through the country in the year 1932, stated that one of the projects which they would put into operation, if returned to power, as they subsequently were, would be to establish a system of arbitration for the Civil Service. So far as I know, the position taken up until the present moment has been that the Civil Service has been offered arbitration, not that arbitration is something which they ought not to claim, but that, subject to certain alleged constitutional difficulties, arbitration has been offered to them. I do not know whether the Minister for Finance, when he comes to take part in this debate—if he does take part in it—will change that view and express a different view or whether he will adhere to it. The scheme of arbitration which was presented or proposed by the Minister, and was very promptly rejected by the Civil Service staff organisations, has been often explained in this House and exposed for the pure sham which it is.
The House will remember that there were limitations of every kind hedging in the proposed scheme of arbitration. Sufficient is it to say that the Minister for Finance had prior veto on the subject matters which might be referred to arbitration, and he had subsequent veto on the awards of the so-called arbitration tribunal, enabling him either to put them in force or to withhold their application at his own discretion. However ridiculous the scheme proposed by the Minister may have been, it was scarcely as ridiculous as the suggestions made by the Brennan Commission for its scheme of arbitration, on which I think the Minister's scheme was based. It would be humorous to consider the terms on which that recommendation was based if the subject-matter were not so serious for a large and important class of the community. I should like, however, to refer the House to a paragraph of the report of the Brennan Commission on this subject, to show what passed for arbitration in the minds of the Commission and afterwards passed for arbitration in the mind of the Minister and in the scheme formulated by him. The interim report, paragraph 53, dealing with this question of arbitration, having agreed that some scheme might be put into force, said:
"It would in some respects be convenient that at the inception of the scheme the Minister for Finance, in order to make it intelligible to the Civil Service, should indicate without prejudice the sort of disputes which he might be prepared to allow to go to arbitration, but we contemplate that this indication should be expressed very generally, that it would be chiefly concerned with mentioning exclusions, and that in any case it would purport to be given for the sake of illustration, and could not afterwards be quoted as to imply any obligation on the Minister to agree to refer any specific dispute to arbitration. It might, we think, convey that the Minister would be prepared to consider favourably the reference to arbitration of any dispute respecting the pay or other conditions of service of any class of civil servants, subject to the proviso that any financial or other important considerations of policy involved do not appear to him to render the dispute unsuitable for treatment by arbitration. It might also convey that the Minister would not on any occasion recognise any obligation to assign reasons for declining to refer the dispute to arbitration. It should be unnecessary"—the report continues —"with such a procedure to attempt to frame any exhaustive catalogue of matters not intended to be referred."
I think the House will agree that any scheme called an arbitration scheme based on recommendations of that kind is nothing short of an absurdity. It is hardly complimentary to the intelligence of the civil servants that the report should open with the words that "in order to make it intelligible to the Civil Service" the Minister should indicate that any reference of disputes is without prejudice; that the classes of dispute which might be referred are to be indicated by exclusion, and that no obligation is to be implied, even when illustrations are given, that the particular class of dispute will afterwards be referable to arbitration, and that there will be no obligation on the Minister so to refer it. Now, of course that is not the idea that any arbitration scheme ought to have. Quite clearly it is the essence of arbitration that the two parties to the matters in difference should have an independent mind brought to bear on that difference, and that the decision ought to be binding upon the parties, subject, of course—as is provided in the terms of the motion before the House—to the overriding authority of Parliament.
I do not know whether the Minister still adheres to the suggestion that there is some constitutional difficulty in the way of setting up an arbitration tribunal which shall have power to bind, on the one hand, the Minister, and, on the other hand, the civil servants, or the class of civil servants concerned in the dispute, subject naturally to the control of this House. On the last occasion when that matter was debated here, that was one of the main points made. That point was first made in the report of the Brennan Commission to which I have referred, and it has been relied on over and over again here in this House. As Deputy Costello pointed out here in moving this motion, if there was any constitutional difficulty under the old Constitution, which he denied, a full opportunity was offered of removing that difficulty when the new Constitution was being framed. But Deputy Costello expressed the view, and I think it is the view entertained by every lawyer who has given any attention to the subject, that there is no such constitutional difficulty, and that a scheme of arbitration can easily be devised which will protect the authority of Parliament in dealing with any financial consideration or other matter affecting civil servants which might be determined by the arbitration board. Therefore, the view which I should like to submit to this House is that the civil servants have a right to have their grievances, if they have them, ventilated and determined by an independent board. I say it is only right that a body of persons who, whatever security they may have and whatever advantages they may have, are precluded from expressing their views in so many ways open to others, should be given this particular method of ventilating and having determined any grievances or difficulties which they may have. I think it is only right to say that the persons who have chosen that particular career are persons of a type to use fairly any opportunities of that kind given to them. Whether they do so or not, if a proper arbitration board or tribunal is established, I have no doubt the Service as a whole and the particular individuals who may be involved in any dispute would loyally accept the decisions of that tribunal.
It is within the knowledge of this House that a certain class of civil servants have already the protection of a legal tribunal. A very large body of the civil servants who are transferred officers, that is, officers who served before the Treaty, officers who served before the institution of the Irish Free State, are protected by the operations of the tribunal set up under the Civil Service (Transferred Officers) Act, 1929. The Government have there, in the operations of that body, a clear precedent for setting up a similar body to determine the grievances and adjust the rights of the civil servants as a whole. I am not suggesting, of course, that equal force ought to be given to the decisions of an arbitration board as are given to the decisions of that particular tribunal. That tribunal was, of course, set up, under the international agreement which the Treaty contained, for the protection of civil servants who were being transferred from one Government to another, but I do say that in the operations of that tribunal the Government have a headline. With proper limitations, it could be adjusted so as to form a very suitable arbitration tribunal. I think in the eight or nine years' experience which the country has had of the operations of that tribunal, it has gained the respect of the civil servants with whose rights it deals, as well as the respect of the Government and of the people. Representatives of the Ministry of Finance on the one hand, and representatives of the transferred officers on the other hand, with an independent chairman, have been able to give fair and just decisions upon the rights of an important body of civil servants. Although I have had some experience of that tribunal, I have never heard any person challenge the justice or efficacy of its work or decisions. If that can be done for officers transferred from the British Civil Service, there is no reason why it cannot be done for the general body of civil servants, again, of course, subject to such proper limitations as the circumstances require. I should like to add my voice to the voices of those who have spoken in this debate in asking the Minister to consider setting up a real scheme for negotiation and arbitration.
My reason is that it has to be remembered that what the motion suggests is not merely an arbitration tribunal to determine rights—that only comes secondarily—but the primary object of the motion we are discussing is that machinery should be provided for enabling the civil servants, by negotiation, to arrive at agreement with representatives of the Government on matters connected with their service and on the remedy of grievances. I should think that most disputes would be capable of being solved by arbitration and negotiation. At the moment they have neither a tribunal nor anything else. The attempt has been made here to set up a representative council. I do not know that that is the precise description of the body, but it was equally as futile as was the scheme of arbitration. It was simply a place where the staff organisation could meet representatives of the Ministry and discuss matters, but it would be futile to call such a system a system of negotiation. It had no power to make decisions or recommendations. It only had power to discuss. For that reason I should like to add my voice to what has been said as to the desirability, in the interests of the civil servants, in the interests of the Government, and in the interests of the country as a whole, to set up such a scheme as will make the civil servants a body of contented servants of the State, satisfied with their conditions and provided with proper opportunities of ventilating their grievances and seeking to have them remedied.