Vol. 252 No. 11
I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £45,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1971, for the salaries and expenses of the Houses of the Oireachtas, including certain grants-in-aid.
May I make a comment on this? Over the past few weeks numerous questions were addressed to the Minister. He answered some of them but eventually found that there was a way of getting rid of them by passing them along to the Ceann Comhairle and saying they were his responsibility and not the responsibility of the Minister. Very briefly, I should like to find out from the Minister what exactly is happening here.
He will recall that I raised the question of what we call the "long debate" here last spring when, in fact, members of the staff of this House—as they have to do tonight—were required to remain on duty and many of them not alone were not paid for the extra time they worked, because they were not in the overtime grade or something like that, but were not given time off in lieu. It is very easy for Members of the House—particularly those who do not believe in spending much time in the House—to say we will sit late. They seem to forget that the staff have to work late also.
Originally, the established number of reporters for this House was 12. That was to cover the Dáil alone; there was no Seanad. It may be news to the Minister but it might put things in their proper perspective if I tell him that there are now 13 reporters to cover the two Houses. The official side claim that they cannot get reporters, but I would suggest that if the salary and conditions of service were attractive it would be quite easy to get reporters. Over the years reporters have left because of bad conditions, long hours, no provision for meals, et cetera. One of the big complaints is that when they work long hours nobody seems to worry about when they will eat, or whether they eat at all. Certainly they get no compensation for meals.
At one time the salaries of reporters were in excess of those of newspapermen and now they are below them. Of course, newspapermen were always considered ideal for the job. They will not take a job now which would pay them less than they are getting at their own job. So there is no sense in saying that reporters cannot be got because the facts are you will not pay them. If you would pay them you would get them. I understand that there was a time when there were slack periods and the Official Reporters revised the Official Reports and did a certain amount of indexing work. Now there are no slack periods with the result that that work has fallen into arrears. I do not know if the Minister is aware that there is no filing done and that, in fact, everything in relation to the reporting of the proceedings of this House, and the general paperwork of this House, has fallen into arrears. There is nobody to do it. Other Parliaments have had similar trouble and some of them employed outsiders to do the work.
Something has got to be done. It is all right for senior officials to smile at the idea of this happening and think: "It is grand. We are not affected." I know they do their jobs and they work long hours too, but the position here with regard to the Reporting Staff is becoming ludicrous and it is about time somebody did something about it. That is why I am delaying the House tonight.
During the "long debate" reporters worked 36½ hours consecutively. I know what I would say if one of my union members was asked to work for 36½ hours, even if he was paid overtime for it. Here there was no overtime and no time off, no meals, no extra pay. What does the House expect? What does the Minister expect? The position was that the staff took the rough with the smooth. There were tough times and there were slack times. Apparently there is no smooth now. All they are getting is the rough end of the stick. Something must be done about it.
Over the past couple of months there were three sittings to be covered. The Dáil proceedings were reported by six reporters, and on one occasion by five. The Seanad was covered by three reporters and the Committee of Public Accounts by two or three, plus the English reinforcements. These were the people who were brought in from England at £29 per day.
Plus.
Plus £5 per day expenses, plus the cost of travelling backwards and forwards to London. The regular staff do not get anything like that. I do not want to be told by anybody that the English people did the job better than the Irishmen and women because they did not. Even in this situation there are anomalies because the girls doing the job are paid much less than the men. I think one widow, with five children, is paid at the same rate as a single girl. A married man would get an allowance in the same circumstances. This is the sort of stupid old-fashioned approach that is being adopted. The sick leave has increased and when somebody is sick the staff can hardly carry on. Recently five reporters were out sick and the remainder had to work very short-handed.
New machinery has been put into operation in the Seanad and I understand that it is proposed to introduce machinery into the Dáil. Has this reduced the number of staff required? Of course, it has not. The position is even worse now than it was before. Reporters have to sit in the Seanad for an hour and a half at a spell, and they are expected to anticipate interruptions. We know how we interrupt here and we can guess how they interrupt in the Seanad. For somebody doing a ten minute "take" it is relatively easy to spot an interruption coming and to take it down, but it is too much to expect them to concentrate for an hour and a half in the Seanad. The Assistant Editor is engaged almost full-time on the new machinery and on training audio-typists. The other Assistant Editor has retired so the Editor has to carry on on his own. I do not know how much more ridiculous this can be. Of course, the position of Assistant Editor is vacant and a number of senior reporters were offered the job but just would not take it.
I do not think that is good enough for the people who are responsible for running this House. I put this straight back on the Minister for Finance who may say that the Ceann Comhairle has the responsibility of doing this, that and the other, but the Minister is the man who must provide the money for the job and there is no one of us who would agree to work under the conditions these people who are doing the reporting of this House and the other House are asked to work under.
Almost the same situation arises with regard to the other staff. There is no point in telling me that they have an organisation which represents them and negotiates for them because they have not a trade union in the general meaning of a trade union. They have an association which is associated with some outside body, but they do not do the negotiating in the same way as my members—I am general secretary of a trade union—would expect me to do the negotiating for them. While I do not expect the Minister to work miracles, and, perhaps, it is unfair to spring this on him tonight, I honestly believe that at the back of his mind he knew, because of the fact that this was raised again and again and shelved eventually on to the Ceann Comhairle, that it was going to be raised. It is not good enough to have members of the staff of this House treated worse than they would be treated in other jobs and it is not good enough to have such a situation in relation to ushers, messengers and paper keepers. A paper keeper who was 18 months in the job applied to be made permanent and because it was said he had not got a knowledge of Irish he was refused promotion to the staff job even though he was doing the job for 18 months and doing it effectively. This is the sort of nonsense people do not like to have to put up with.
All the staff here are doing their job well but we are not giving them the consideration they are entitled to. If we decide, as we decided tonight, to sit until 12 o'clock, or as often happened before, to sit until half-past one or two o'clock, it may be all right for people who come here only occasionally but it is not all right for people who are hard at work and it is not all right for the staff who must start in the morning at the normal time. We all start at half-past ten but how does that affect Dáil Deputies? Look around you. They are all resting somewhere at this late hour of the night but they are doing their work, which is something the general public cannot understand when they come in here and find the benches empty. We know that they are doing useful work somewhere else, but at least they can relax at this late hour but a member of the staff cannot.
With regard to the pay, the conditions under which they work, their meals and particularly with regard to the overtime and the conditions under which they work, something has to be done. I cannot expect the Minister to take out a wand and wave it around the House and say "OK that settles it; everything is all right". But I appeal to him, before the Dáil reassembles after the Easter recess, to try to work out some reasonable system. He is a reasonable man and must understand the situation. For God's sake, let him do something about the long night's work here for which certain people were not paid, and let us not have this matter raised here again and being told that they are going to get time off some time, when pigs begin to fly, as they say down the country. Most certainly there is no opportunity of getting time off now because they have been overworked. Why is it not possible to pay them the few pounds extra which was due to them and have done with it for good?
I agree with what Deputy Tully said in regard to our staffs, particularly the Reporting Staff. We never appreciated them. We always took them for granted until we had to import others. I will not comment on what we imported but they were no better and I will not say how dear they were.
Another matter I would like to bring to the Minister's attention is the telephonic communication between this House and the Department of Social Welfare.
This has nothing to do with this Vote.
We are dealing with this House.
We are dealing with subheads in regard to the House.
If we cannot communicate with the Department of Social Welfare, someone is falling down and I submit that when we are dealing with the House it is a matter for the House.
There is a Vote dealing with these matters but the subheads of this Vote do not permit the Deputy to deal with this matter.
I see the Minister writing down something.
I am not writing about that.
Would the Minister kindly write down something in that regard?
As a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, I think I should contribute a few words to this discussion because, due to the lack of reporting staff, the committee find themselves in difficult and embarrassing situations at times and, unfortunately, from time to time they have to suffer the embarrassment and odium thrown at them by Members of the House. They find themselves in a position not of their own making and we certainly feel it unfair that much of the criticism arising in relation to the reporting situation should be directed at us.
Another aspect of this question occurs to me. If a committee system or some such system is eventually established to carry out some of the business of the Dáil, I feel that we must have extra reporters and extra clerical staff. As has been said, this cannot be done overnight. It must be done gradually—the Reporting Staff trained and got working—otherwise, much as has happened at the Committee of Public Accounts, when the demand is made that would impose extra duty on the committee, the staff will not be available to do committee work.
I should like, first of all, to say that I have not attempted, as has been suggested by Deputy Tully, to shuffle off my responsibility on to the Ceann Comhairle. What I have done is to state the factual position, which is that the responsibility for the organisation of the work of the staff is that of the Ceann Comhairle and is not a matter in which I can or should interfere. My responsibility is to provide the necessary finance and to sanction the expenditure involved. For example, the Deputy referred to the new method of reporting in the Seanad. This is a matter over which I have absolutely no control nor do I wish to have any control. I say that not because I am trying to cast any responsibility on to anybody else but to make clear what the position is. I have explained to the House in reply to questions and supplementary questions what the sanctioned staff strength is. There are some vacancies. This is true. However, I think it will be generally recognised that the whole resources of the Houses of the Oireachtas are under considerable pressure at the moment in circumstances which cannot be expected to recur or to recur as a normal form of activity in the House, unless, as Deputy Gibbons has said, we decide to adopt a committee system. If we decide to do that, I agree it is a different situation but it is only reasonable to expect that in the circumstances in which we have been operating, where we have the Dáil, the Seanad and the Committee of Public Accounts meeting, the resources would be strained. Incidentally, Deputy Gibbons, as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, apparently feels that some of the criticism that has been levelled in regard to reporters being brought in from abroad has been levelled at members of the committee?
I do not know why.
I felt that I was the one being criticised.
I do not think so.
I should like to make it clear that this was done at the request of the committee, which is an all-Party committee, to facilitate its operations but it is no longer happening and the committee, by arranging its sittings at certain times, has ensured that we can manage—with difficulty but we can manage—within the resources available to us. Reporters from abroad are no longer engaged. The rates of pay of reporters are those determined by the Civil Service Arbitration Board. Deputy Tully will appreciate what that implies and what it may imply in regard to any changes. I know that above a certain level overtime is not paid in the normal course. If overtime were to be paid in respect of certain particular times to some people in that category and not to others this could present problems. Having said that, I am not closing the door on the situation. The normal procedure is that there is time off in lieu. Deputy Tully is right in saying that that has not happened in regard to the long sitting because of what has occurred since then and because of the extra strain on the resources. In those circumstances it may be possible to find another remedy but the matter is still being examined. I cannot give the final word on it at present.
May I make one comment? Deputy Dr. Gibbons has made a remark here about the fact that the Public Accounts Committee were being blamed for the position. One of my colleagues who is on that committee had the same idea. Most certainly it was not my intention or the intention of anybody to blame the Public Accounts Committee for anything that has happened. They are not responsible for the shortage of staff and they have to do their job. There is no question whatever of casting any blame on them.
I wish to thank the Minister for his suggestion of a solution to this problem. The Minister for Justice said here earlier that after three months when it was not found possible to give the guards time off, on the recommendation of the Conroy Commission they are entitled to overtime. I would suggest that the same thing should apply to the staff of this House.
