Deputy Lalor has been informed that any broadening of the scope of the subject matter which he is raising on the Adjournment, for example, to bring in unemployment or the lack of employment for school leavers, would not be in order.
Adjournment Debate. - Civil Service Recruitment.
First of all, I want to thank you for enabling me to raise this matter. I gathered from your office that I could not use the occasion to talk about the fact that there is a difficulty about the 52,000 school leavers——
I trust the Deputy will conform with the understanding we arrived at.
I will endeavour to do so to the greatest extent possible, but it is extremely difficult because I have here before me The Irish Independent which conveys information of announcements by various organisations, State, semi-State and otherwise, that recruitment is being curtailed or being done away with altogether. Built into this announcement is the knowledge that the civil service have spoken of a strict control on expansion.
Naturally, I sought to raise this matter on the Adjournment because the civil service is the only direct State employment agency here and with the desperately serious crisis that looms ahead for potential workers, clerical and otherwise, one would have hoped that the Minister for the Public Service would in some way arrange that recruitment to the civil service this year, above any other time, would be expanded to the greatest possible extent. For some time we have been debating financial measures in the Dáil from which the Government hope to collect huge sums of additional money and during the debates it has become very obvious that the Revenue Commissioners' staff will need to be increased enormously to cope with the additional work.
Instead, we have had the civil service, over which the Minister for the Public Service presides and for which he provides the money, stating that not alone will they not be able to provide employment to absorb the 52,000 school leavers, not to talk of the 103,000 others unemployed, but that they intend to tighten up. I endeavoured to check today with the Department and the information I got is that due to the rapid rise in public service pay in the last few years, strict control will now be maintained. A special effort to improve efficiency in the service is being maintained, which is the same as saying that this is not the continuous position in the civil service. Anyway, they say they are looking for the efficiency that makes for the greatest use of existing staff.
I, as a parent, am especially worried about this lack of recruitment to the public service, like the parents of the 52,000 school leavers this year. One of my children is doing his leaving certificate this year, I am reasonably happy in the knowledge that he is quite young, and he has taken the decision that he will do his leaving certificate again next year to try to improve his chances of finding a suitable job at the end of that time, mindful of the prospect that by this time next year the inevitable will have happened, that there will be a change of Government as so many people have been hoping and longing for.
Of course, I do not accept a change of Government would mean a miraculous re-creation of job prospects immediately, in the background of the situation we have today when the economy is so low. There is not a Government spokesman from the Taoiseach down who would have the nerve to create the impression that the position will not be far worse before it gets better. Even if there was a major expansion in civil service and semi-State recruitment, I am afraid it would absorb only a very small percentage of the 52,000 school leavers. I listened to a programme on RTE today in which there was a discussion. The writer of a career guidance document who had recommended jobs in the civil service said that only about 10 per cent of school leavers this year will find employment.
A spokesman from AnCO promised to do the best he could in providing places for training but first preference would have to be given to unemployed married men out of the total of 2,000 places, which is minimal in relation to present requirements.
I can appreciate the fact that the Minister for the Public Service could not take this debate tonight. I am human enough to realise that he has been here since 10.30 this morning and has had a 12-hour session. However, I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to offer even the sop of assuring us, on behalf of the Minister and the Government, that there will not be a cut-back in civil service recruitment this year. While that is only a drop in the ocean by comparison with requirements, the situation demands some response from the official employer, the State. We realise that among the 52,000 boys and girls are a great number who will not have been trained for the civil service but for manual or what we traditionally call blue collar jobs who cannot be accommodated. But let the Government endeavour to give the good example.
Since I was elected as a Deputy in 1961, and having served mainly on the Government side of the House, I can say I have had a number of embarrassing moments and quite a number of difficulties to deal with as Parliamentary Secretary and subsequently as a Minister. Therefore, I feel for the Government and particularly for the back benchers who have to carry the can and meet the mothers and fathers of boys and girls doing their leaving certificate either in secondary or vocational schools this year and having to admit that there is no employment for them.
The spokesman for AnCO finished up the interview on radio today by advising young people to take any job they get, not to be choosey. The brother who wrote the career guidance booklet suggested the Minister for Labour should set up an advisory council. This is probably one of the things the Minister will do, through the Minister for Labour, because an advisory council could create about ten jobs for the "boys". We have had enough of that, and the "boys" I am talking about are not the boys of 17 or 18 years of age who badly need some type of job at present. Everybody knows who the "boys" are from that point of view.
Nobody knows better than Fianna Fáil.
We want the creation of genuine employment for these 52,000 young people, and it behoves the Government to ensure that there will be no falling off of job creation within the civil service.
If I had time, I could go through the taxation legislation that has been passed by this Government over the past two years, creating in its own way a huge number of administrative problems and positions within the civil service. It is deplorable that these young people should be told that there will be such streamlining within the civil service that there will be no jobs available for them.
It has become recognised in the last ten years that the civil service has not been getting the cream of what is leaving our secondary schools because of the competition from Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna, the banks, the corporations. Here is a glorious chance, with the lack of recruitment in industrial and other organisations, for the Government to re-inject high-class talent into the civil service. I am not saying this is a welcome thing—it is anything but that— but it does provide the civil service with the opportunity of revamping itself. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary and the various Ministers know—and if they do not, I am surprised the secretaries or assistant secretaries have not been informing them—that the best talent was being taken off by developing and progressive industry that was generated under Fianna Fáil. I am surprised that any Deputy on the other side of the House would smirk at the statement that we developed industry. Up to two years ago when this Government took over industry was developing and expanding.
Is the Deputy insulting the intelligence of our civil servants?
I am not. I am telling the Deputy something which my senior civil servants told me. It is a recognised fact. I am not insulting civil servants. I served in four different Departments and found nothing but dedicated service in all of them, but I am also aware that over the last ten years the really talented young people have not been going into the civil service because they were able to get better money in developing industry.
Although the office of the Minister for the Public Service had to make some statement arising out of the inquiries that were made of that office, I question the advisability of issuing a statement at this critical time saying, as reported in The Irish Independent today, that there would be strict control over expansion, that a special effort was being made to improve efficiency, and that it was proposed to introduce re-deployment to meet the needs of additional staff requirements. That means: “We are not taking on extra staff this year.” It is more and more of the cut-down. It means that the Minister for the Public Service is as broke as everybody else.
I must now call on the Parliamentary Secretary to reply.
I have listened to Deputy Lalor attentively. I want to apologise for the absence of the Minister—I am grateful that Deputy Lalor realised that the Minister is a very tired man after 12 hours non-stop here today. I should like the Deputy to analyse his final statement when he said that he received dedicated service during his years in office from the civil service. Does he now imply that the civil service is not doing its proper job or that in any section of it there is room for greater efficiency to be achieved by increasing the number of the staff surplus to the needs of the nation? I think he does. If he got dedicated service, further recruitment and further expenditure and further cost to the taxpayers would not make the service any more efficient than it is now or than it was in Deputy Lalor's time.
The total number of civil servants, excluding those designated as industrial staff, is now in the region of 47,000 representing an increase of approximately 30 per cent over a five-year period. By general standards this is an extremely rapid rate of increase. It has also made a huge impact on the public service pay bill which is now over £400 million and is moving towards 40 per cent of voted current expenditure. The provision for the pay of civil servants alone for this year exceeds £150 million. These statistics do not lie. We must consider the people who are paying for this service and there is a clear obligation on us to have a critical look at the rapid expansion of the civil service and ensure that there is strict control of this expansion while at the same time guaranteeing adequate staff to provide a full range of services. That is an irrefutable fact which Deputy Lalor has not contradicted but has rather confirmed—he received dedicated service. I believe the civil service is doing the same job now. If we expand further we are expanding for the sake of absorbing extra staff at a cost of more millions. Does he think that would be right?
I believe the Government have taken the proper view. The Government have only restricted the creation of new jobs within the service. All the vacancies that will accrue will be filled. Approximately 3,200 new jobs were created in the civil service in 1974. This was a record figure. Not all these jobs are yet filled and the filling of them in addition to the new jobs created this year and filling normal vacancies arising from retirements will provide significant opportunities for school-leavers. The Deputy need not smile—this is a fact.
It was only a joke.
Mr. Kenny
Politicians are the butt for many jokes.
Where are all these new jobs and who have you been creating them for—to give jobs to "the boys" and the sons-in-law?
Order. We have had an orderly debate up to now; let it remain so.
Mr. Kenny
Deputy Lalor proposes that recruitment be expanded to absorb school-leavers. That would be irrational. What would you do with them when already the civil service is working efficiently to meet the needs of the country? The criterion for the number recruited must be the need of the service to carry out its work efficiently. I ask any Deputy who visits Departments is the civil service not doing this? I think it is. We can find no fault with it. Deputy Lalor is suggesting that we should recruit civil servants that we do not really need. We will recruit, but only to meet our needs. If the Deputy is logical he will realise that I am right. The morning paper carrying the lurid headline, "Jobs" put him into a tizzy. I did not realise that a motion could be taken in this way. Apparently the Deputy, on seeing that headline said: "This is an opportunity for me to raise in the Dáil the recruitment of civil servants and the matter of 52,000 school-leavers". I believe the Deputy has adopted a confused idea, a misapprehension of the situation. While expansion of the civil service is being curtailed to a certain extent there will be ample opportunities for school-leavers.
Almost every year there are about 50,000 school-leavers. How are they absorbed? Deputy Lalor mentioned only the civil service; he did not mention the public service.
I was not allowed to do so.
Mr. Kenny
The Deputy's motion was not properly framed; it omitted the public service. The numbers employed in the following categories of the public service in 1975 were: gardaí 8,000; Army, 14,000; teachers, 31,000; health boards, 30,000. If the motion were correctly framed it would have included those categories. There is no curb on the expansion of the Garda in the current year. On the contrary, the number of gardaí is expected to increase by 300 to 400 and Army numbers may rise by 1,200.
The money the Minister mentioned a few minutes ago included the Garda.
Mr. Kenny
No, it did not. Another factor restricting recruitment is that married women are coming back into the service. I am sure Deputies will agree with that. These are the thoughts that I should like Deputy Lalor at the end of the day to take home with him and absorb. If he comes to me again I can give him more information.
May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary one question? Would he ask the Minister for the Public Service to stop the computers that have displaced persons—seeing there is an emergency—as this might make jobs available in this area?
Mr. Kenny
I shall convey the Deputy's suggestion to the Minister.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 11.30 a.m. on Thursday, 29th May, 1975.