Yes. We are awaiting a reply to a communication which has just gone out in respect to that. With reference to the Civil Service questions that were raised, I shall refer first to the question of pay. There was a comparison of the rates of pay here with the rates of pay in Northern Ireland. As a matter of fact, there is a peculiar feature in the position. The Northern Ireland rates of pay are the same as the British rates. The rates paid in Dublin, even before the change of Government, were not equal to the British rates. They were always some 5 per cent. less than the rates paid in London. But our rates of pay, I think, are something like 10 per cent. under the British rates of pay. Some Deputies speaking about this matter did not really compare comparable rates, because we have a differential scale which does not exist in Northern Ireland.
We have one rate of pay for women and unmarried men; we have another rate of pay for married men, and then, in addition to the actual salary paid to every married officer since the new scales were adopted, there is a children allowance which, in the case of a clerical officer, may run up to a maximum of £60. It is possible, therefore, for certain clerical officers under our scale to have actually £260 per annum where, under the British régime, the rate would be only £237 10s. per annum. So that while the rate of pay is lower, on the whole it can be actually higher, in certain cases, and those, cases where the individuals receiving the salary have the greatest responsibility.
This question of rates of pay is one that it is impossible to get agreement about, but you have, at any rate, to pay some attention to commercial standards. Somebody said that the proper rate of pay was the rate of pay that would attract people of the proper class and retain them in some reasonable state of content. I think one needs to emphasise "reasonable" there, because you will not get absolute content in any public service. You will always have a desire and a hope for higher remuneration. People who enter upon any walk of life at any particular rate of pay, even if they think that the rate of pay is reasonably good when they enter upon the employment, begin, after a time, to wish it was somewhat higher. You never will have absolute content; it never will be possible to say that any grade of your Civil Service thinks that the rate of pay is ample and that no further increase should be made. Looking at it in that way, you have to have some regard to the opportunities for alternative employments in the country. Rates of pay, I think, have to be somewhat higher in a country where there are a great many other opportunities. It is not just right to say that you will only pay a rate that will get people to take the positions. But at the same time I do not think you could attempt to fix a theoretical standard which has no relation to the competition that a particular rate of salary will obtain.
For our clerical and junior executive positions the competition has certainly been very keen. In the last examination for clerical officers there were available 207 fully qualified candidates, though the number of positions offered was only 30. In the last examination for junior executive officers there were 102 fully qualified candidates for seven places, so that for every entry there is ample competition and the people who are obtained are very well qualified and very good material for the work they have to undertake. One does not find that people who have entered leave the Service in the early days when they might leave it because it is obvious there are not more attractive positions available outside, at any rate to the ordinary individual.
With reference to promotion, the difficulty there is: taking the clerical class, there have been great numbers of people promoted from the clerical class since the change of Government, and if promotion has been shut down since 1926 we have got to remember that the best people fit for promotion had very good opportunities, and that the people who have come in since 1926 are certainly not ripe for promotion yet; so I do not think, broadly speaking, there is any hardship upon actual individuals so far as promotion is concerned just for the present. We acknowledge that there must be promotion. One of the ways by which the people in any class should be obtained is promotion. As a matter of fact the number of promotees at present is very high. Take the Junior Executive Class at present. It numbers 460. Of this number 220 were already in the class at the change of Government. Of the remaining 240, 198 have been promoted from the clerical class, and only 46 are officers who entered through what should be the normal method of open competitive examination. I do not take the view of Deputy Davin, who argued that all above the very lowest ranks should be recruited by promotion. Experience is undoubtedly useful, and it is a desirable and a necessary thing to encourage zeal, and all that sort of thing, and to recruit a considerable number of the Junior Executive class from the clerical class through promotion; but it is also a desirable thing to get well-educated young people into that class, fresh from school. Many of those people without the experience will be in a few months very much more useful and alert than any promotees except those who are really of the very best type. I would not at all accept the point of view that was suggested by Deputy Davin. The idea is that for the future the Junior Executive class should consist in part of promotees and in part of people who entered directly by examination. As the class stands at the moment, at least the part of it which was created since the change of Government, a very small proportion consists of people who entered by competition.
Again, the clerical class in the Free State for a variety of reasons is a weak class; a great number of the best in it have been promoted. There are very few who entered that class by competitive examination. The clerical class at the moment numbers 2,200, and about 1,000 of these were temporary clerks who entered as a result of a limited examination. Of others in the class some entered by means of a limited examination during the British time. They were called, I think, Lytton entrants. I think there were limited examinations whereby ex-members of the National Army were admitted. In addition to that, there were a good number of people who were promoted in the British time from the ranks of assistant clerk, the lowest permanent rank in the British Civil Service, to the clerical class. You had others promoted—sorting clerks and telegraphists. I think out of the whole 2,200 there is a very small proportion, some 13 per cent. who have passed the competitive examination of the kind which will be the normal means of entering the clerical class. I think myself that this temporary ban on promotion which has taken place involves no hardship and certainly no injustice on the clerical class. Promotions will, after a time, have to be resumed, and I hope they will be resumed even on a small scale at a fairly early date, because I do recognise that there are people who will not work with all the zeal that one might look for if there is not some prospect of advancing in the service before them.
Some Deputy said that at present a writing assistant cannot become a clerical officer. There have not actually been promotions in the writing assistant class. The writing assistant class is a new class, only a few years in existence. It is doubtful, even if there were no ban on promotion, that any one of the writing assistants would be promoted. Certainly there is none of them due for promotion except a very small group who entered the first years we took in writing assistants. I should think the ban on promotion would be first raised, and can be raised quite soon as far as writing assistants are concerned. I think when promotions are resumed from class to class that the first people who will benefit will be the writing assistants. While promotions from writing assistants to clerical officers, and from clerical officers to junior executive officers are not taking place, it is not a fact that there are no promotions. The minor staff to which reference was made do provide avenues to promotion, and if the person appointed does not go to as high a maximum as he would go if he got appointed as junior executive, at any rate he generally gets a substantial lift on being appointed to the junior staff post, because the maximum goes within £50 of the maximum of the junior executive.
I would not like to agree with the Deputies who say that the representative council which is at present in existence has done no good. In point of fact a number of matters have been arranged, and a number of requests have been acceded to, as a result of discussion at the Council, but it cannot be accepted that in the present financial conditions of the country any sort of machinery that could be devised is going to give substantial benefits to the staffs. The real position at the moment is that the staff cannot look for improved pay or conditions because of conditions in the country, and all that can take place must be in the nature of very minor adjustments of one sort or another. I think the annoyance of some members of the staff with the representative council arises from the fact that they expect results that cannot be got and that they would be just as discontented and as annoyed with any sort of body which might be set up.
