Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 22 Feb 1934

Vol. 50 No. 13

Vote 13—Civil Service Commission.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim Bhreise ná raghaidh thar £3,030 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1934, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Coimisiún na Stát-Sheirbhíse (Uimh. 5 de 1924 agus Uimh. 41 de 1926) agus an Choimisiúin um Cheapacháin Aitiúla (Uimh. 39 de 1926).

That a Supplementary sum not exceeding £3,030 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1934, for the salaries and expenses of the Civil Service Commission (Nos. 5 of 1924 and 41 of 1926) and of the Local Appointments Commission (No. 39 of 1926).

The necessity for the introduction of this Supplementary Estimate is due, chiefly, to the extra expenses following the Civil Service Examination held in December last for 360 posts as Established Employment Clerks under the Department of Industry and Commerce following the passing of the Unemployment Assistance Act of 1933. This examination, for the cost of which a sum of £2,820 approximately is required, was not foreseen when the Estimate was prepared. The Supplementary Estimate also makes provision for a gratuity of £450 paid to each of two former Civil Service Commissioners in consideration of the long years of service which they had given, not only on the Civil Service Commission, but also on the Local Appointments Commission. One of these filled the office from the year 1923 up to the rearrangement of the personnel of the Civil Service Commission in 1932. The other held the office from 1924 until 1933.

Mr. McGilligan

I would be glad to know if £1,085 is to be paid to the members of the Civil Service Commission? Is that right?

Mr. MacEntee

Oh, no.

Mr. McGilligan

How much of the £1,085 is to be paid to them?

Mr. MacEntee

They are to be paid £900.

Mr. McGilligan

Is it to be equally divided?

Mr. MacEntee

Yes, equally divided between the two.

Mr. McGilligan

Would the Minister agree to say what is the official rank and the salary of these two members of the Civil Service?

Mr. MacEntee

One is assistant-secretary. The other is secretary of a Department. The extra remuneration is at the rate of £50 for each year of service, and that is £450 for the nine years for each. This falls to be charged at the full rate of income tax.

Mr. McGilligan

On the present year's rate?

Mr. MacEntee

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

This is rather an interesting item. I do not regret that these two gentlemen should get this sum of money. They have earned it. The Minister avoided answering the question I put to him. What is the present salary of the people who are getting this gratuity of £450? I am not criticising any salary they get, but some time ago the Minister criticised it. I am satisfied they earned their salary, but the Minister did not think so a few years ago. I am not objecting to these gratuities.

Mr. MacEntee

Then, why raise it?

Mr. McGilligan

To remind the Minister of his own fatuity.

Mr. MacEntee

Then it is simply for the purpose of making a speech and not a criticism of the Estimate.

Mr. McGilligan

There was a time when the Minister held that anybody who got a salary of £1,000 was getting too much, irrespective of any appointment the man may hold or any experience he may have. Now he is weakening in that particular principle. At one time the secretaries of Departments especially were the class to be picked out by him and held up to public odium and contempt simply by reason of the fact that they were getting the salaries they deserved.

Mr. MacEntee

Not at all, except that the Deputy is holding them up to public odium and contempt now.

Mr. McGilligan

No. I welcome the payment of this gratuity to these officers. They are worth it.

Mr. MacEntee

Then the Deputy's speech is for the purpose of blowing off steam.

Mr. McGilligan

The Minister should not equate me with himself. There have been many broken promises. This is one of them here. The Minister was very loud in his denunciation of salaries over £1,000 a year going to anybody. The Minister did not hold up individuals to odium or contempt. He simply held up classes without knowing anything about them or about the work they were doing or the value of their work to the State. Those two officers were both very hard-worked civil servants. I certainly know that both of them worked many hours outside their official hours, and both of them took up duties which they could quite easily have refused to shoulder, and they were exempt by the regulations of the Civil Service from taking up these duties. Both these officers were slandered by the Minister some years ago——

Mr. MacEntee

No.

Mr. McGilligan

——slandered simply for being in possession of the salaries that were due to them. During all the time they did this work gratuitously. They did very good work. They were even maligned and slandered in that work. They were charged that they were not impartial, and that they were swayed by a number of considerations and not by the merits of the candidates. The Minister thinks now by just coming in here and casually announcing that £900 is to be given to these two civil servants, that we ought to take that as a definite apology for all he has said both in relation to the work they were doing as civil servants and in relation to the work they were doing as Civil Service Commissioners. The latter work was work outside their official duties which they need not have taken on. I make the statement now which would have been jeered at years ago, that when they took on these additional duties that that in no way set back their work as civil servants. They did more than the work they were to do as civil servants. They did this thing extra. The Minister now in 1934 after making no very clear recantation of his views in the past, announces to the House that he is to pay £450 to each of them. Presumably he thinks they are worth it. He has not said so. There should be some explanation given of the Minister's change of front with regard to this. Would it not be a good thing if, even at this time, he would make confession that he misjudged these people previously when he said that no man was worth more than £1,000 a year?

Mr. MacEntee

Will the Deputy the statement?

Mr. McGilligan

Over and over again it was made. It was even made to the extent that the Minister promised that he would not take £1,000 himself, so clear was it that £1,000 was an extraordinary or a superfluous salary for any man to take. In face of all that, it demands something more than saying that most of this Vote is for the expenses of the big examination to get clerks for the Unemployed Assistance Bill.

Mr. MacEntee

Is not the amount for that purpose?

Mr. McGilligan

Merely saying that.

Mr. MacEntee

I did not merely say that.

Mr. McGilligan

The other thing was thrown in in a casual way, that there was this other amount of £1,085. It had to be queried before we got the exact amount given to those two people. This does mark a change of policy and a very welcome change. It marks an appreciation now from the inside of what the Minister in his ignorance previously condemned, that good work demands good pay, and that good men are well worth good pay, if they can be got to give good service. It is rather a scandalous thing, if people are getting an addition to their emoluments to cover a back period, in one case from 1923 to 1932, and in the other case to cover a period from 1924 to 1933, that they should be mulcted in income tax on the lump sum at the present high rates. Really, if the money should be given, it should be given without this absurd deduction.

If the Minister is not going to explain whether he has changed his attitude towards the salaries being paid to people of merit and experience, will he tell us how he is going to reconcile the payment of this £900 with the lopping off of £1,000 of the saving that is supposed to accrue to the State from the robbing of the vocational education people in the country? Does he think that the time when he is setting out to rob about £1,000 from the vocational education people in the country is the time to drop into the Dáil casually and, without any explanation or statement that this is worth while, to ask the House to vote this £1,085? There ought to be some consistency. I suggest that the proper line is to vote this money, and vote it willingly, and then adjust your attitude towards that unfortunate class, the vocational education teachers, about whom it was agreed here last week that 80 per cent., at any rate, are paid so low that they will not come within the scope of the Cuts Bill. The rest of this Vote is because of the Unemployment Assistance Bill. We meet unemployed assistance at every hand's turn.

Mr. MacEntee

They are not left to starve the way the Deputy would have left them.

Mr. McGilligan

There would not have been so many.

Mr. MacEntee

No, they would be under the turf.

Mr. McGilligan

At any rate, as the figures challenged to-night show, there were more put into employment in my last year in office than have gone into occupation in my successor's two years. This examination was one of the jokes of the country. There had to be a measure of this type introduced because, according to the Minister for Education, there were some 60,000 or 70,000 people who could not find work, despite the promise of 84,000 being put into industrial occupation. A vast number of clerks were required in order to administer this terrific scheme of doles, and so we had this examination and these fees for the examiners. I heard a cynical suggestion that the examination test was not a fair one—that there should have been a question on the plan, that there should have been a question on the number of industries which the Government promised to set up. There might even have been a competition amongst them, from the point of view of acuteness and intelligence, to point out how many could spot the big number of factories that existed in the country—if there are any of them. For the future these men have to spot the unemployed. They have got to find out whether a man's means is above a certain point, to find out whether he gets additional means such as would preclude him from qualifying for unemployment assistance. Would it not be a suitable and congruous thing to put those people on that search with which the Minister for Industry and Commerce has been occupying himself for nearly two years and has not yet got any further than the boast he made last night, that somewhere in the region of Dublin there are 30 of those factories? I think the examination was held in Dublin. Would it not have been quite a good way of discovering the mental alertness of these people to query what was in their minds as to the industrial advance being made in this country in the last couple of years —and this particularly would have tested their imagination more than their intelligence—what were the signs of it?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I should like to know how we can discuss, on a Vote of this kind, the examination papers or what should be the examination papers.

Mr. McGilligan

We are told that this Vote is for examiners. The biggest examination we had in this country is the one we had under the first Fianna Fáil administration to get clerks to deal with the first dole scheme ever introduced in the country, and that was brought about by maladministration of the country and its funds. That is the question that is being debated. I am suggesting that this examination has not been properly conducted, because the proper test I suggest——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Nobody knows better than the Deputy that we cannot discuss here in this fashion the questions set at the examination or what should have been the questions set or the competency of the examiners or the result of the examination. These things do not fall for consideration under this Vote.

Mr. McGilligan

How am I to discuss whether it is fair or proper to pay £1,735 in fees to the examiners if I cannot discuss the examination?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the Deputy attempts to deal with the matter outside the Rules of Order I will then indicate that to him, but he cannot raise that matter in this fashion.

Mr. McGilligan

May I put as a proper point what I was discussing— the type of examination? Is that allowed? The people who are called for the examination?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

An advertisement was issued, certain people applied to sit at the examination, certain examination papers were set, the answers were adjudicated on and the results have been announced. Clearly, raising it in this fashion is outside the scope of this Vote.

Mr. McGilligan

If, in a particular case, I can give an indication that papers were set at an examination for which money is being asked from the House and that the test was wholly inadequate to the particular type of service afterwards required, surely that would be a suitable matter to discuss when the payment of fees came up for consideration? If the examiners were being paid as proper examiners surely it is open to me to discuss whether they were, in fact, whether they did, in fact, examine properly?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy knows the particular Vote on which the Civil Service Commissioners' administration can be raised. It is not this Vote.

Mr. McGilligan

I am not dealing with the Civil Service Commissioners. I am dealing with the examiners. I am asking how they pick the examiners. I am taking that question——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Picking the examiners and conducting the examination, is purely a Civil Service matter, and that matter can be raised on a Vote but it cannot be raised in this fashion on this Vote.

Mr. McGilligan

How is the conduct of the examinations a Civil Service matter? It is quite true the choice of the examiners is performed by the Civil Service Commissioners. How the examiners do their work is not a matter for the Civil Service Commissioners.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Clearly it is. The functions of the Civil Service Commissioners extend to the choice of the examiners. If they choose wrong or inefficient examiners, it is a matter of administration, and that can be questioned in its proper place.

Mr. McGilligan

Your rule is that the Vote for the Civil Service Commission is the proper place in which to raise this matter.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will get an indication of the proper place to raise this matter if he seeks it.

Mr. McGilligan

You have given an indication that from your point of view the proper place to raise it was on the Civil Service Commission Vote.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I have said that the matter that the Deputy wishes to raise now cannot be raised in this way on this Vote. I am not speaking of anything else.

Mr. McGilligan

It is not a lead but it is a hint and I wish to quote it from the Official Reports for approval when the matter comes up again.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair is not here for cross-examination. The Chair decides questions on immediate matters that come up before it. It does not give any indication in advance, and nothing on the records will show that it has done so in this instance.

Mr. McGilligan

There is nothing else that I can discuss. I asked a few questions. Is there going to be any reply?

Mr. MacEntee

They were entirely irrelevant.

Question put and agreed to.