Deputy Deasy is in possession. He has 59 minutes left.
Estimates, 1979. - Vote 42: Labour (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That a sum not exceeding £33,710,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1979, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Labour, including certain services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain grants-in-aid.
—(Minister for Labour.)
I shall concern myself primarily with industrial relations in the public sector. Private enterprise has a safety valve when it comes to strikes and industrial chaos in that, if the management side is unsatisfactory, the shareholders in the firm see to it that the management is quickly removed and replaced or, if the dispute is unreasonable, the concern may pack up and leave as certain firms have done in the recent past, including Ferenka. In the public sector the problem has to be resolved; there is no easy way out. There are shortcomings in the public sector and one is that you do not fire management. I suppose there is provision for it. You do not give them a golden handshake, say "Thank you" and let them go. You must persist with the people you have in the personnel department or industrial relations department. There is no question of that sector of the civil service closing down. The employees know there is certainty about the continuance of their employment. So, there are difficulties to overcome which do not exist in the private sector. It makes the resolution of industrial disputes all the more difficult.
We sympathise with the Minister to a degree when these disputes go on and on and when they occur frequently. But surely it is the Minister's and the Government's duty to see that outmoded methods of negotiation of conciliation and arbitration and antiquated systems are changed. In the Minister's statement today he rather insinuated that he might very well do just that. But we have been listening to those insinuations for years and nothing has been done. Obviously, something must be done. The Minister refers to new legislation, cooling off periods; that is not necessarily the solution. The Minister will probably have great resistance from the trade unions if he brings in restrictive legislation.
The Deputy must not have read my speech or if so he should read it again.
I shall quote what the Minister said. He said:
I continue to receive demands for more legislation—legislation outlawing strikes and pickets, legislation providing for cooling-off periods and so on. I can well understand the reasons for the calls for law in cases particularly where the life of the community is disrupted by minority groups who persist in the pursuit of their own interests by ignoring agreed procedures. So far I have resisted these demands, believing that sanity will prevail in industrial relations and that voluntary arrangements negotiated between employer and employee will be supported and will be allowed to work. I believe that I am expressing the sentiments of all right thinking people in the country when I say that this is not too much to expect.
However, if small groups persist in pursuing their own interests to the detriment of the community at large, the elected representatives of the people may have to consider seriously whether the public interest requires some measures to be taken to protect the peoples interests, especially where services and supplies essential to the life of the people are affected.
That is all right so long as you are not mischieviously misrepresenting me.
No. That is exactly what I have started. I am quoting from the Minister's speech and that is what I was saying before I was interrupted by the Minister. Later, the Minister said:
... I do not see my office as one of detachment or aloofness from the negotiating scene.
The public in general would say very much to the contrary. I have been outlining the difficulty that exists when it comes to dealing with industrial action in the public sector. The Minister will have to show imagination, flair, flamboyance and leadership. These have been noticeably absent in recent months—in fact for the past two years. Could the Minister tell us what he intends to do to end the present unsatisfactory state of affairs? We have this promise of legislation to protect the people's interests. Perhaps more trade unionists would agree with the Minister's sentiments in that regard. They have a thorough dislike for the minority element that continually tries to disrupt. We have always had that element to a degree. We probably have it to a greater degree now and we shall have it in the future and we must face the fact that it is there.
Perhaps legislation is the answer; perhaps not. Perhaps a little streamlining of the existing procedures is badly needed. That is the proposal I should like to propound here, to-day streamlining the existing negotiations procedure.
All too often people who are in a backwater in their careers in the public sector are put into positions such as personnel manager or put in charge of matters relating to the industrial relations sector. The bright boys are put in the front line. They take the initiative, whether in the civil service, the private sector or any area where jobs, profit and success are at stake. For far too long we have allowed industrial relations in the civil service, in the semi-State bodies and in local authorities to drag. We are operating a system that we inherited almost 60 years ago from the British and we have done virtually nothing to update it. The operation of that outmoded system is causing a great deal of our problems at the present time. The British, who left us with that system, have completely overhauled their methods of operation. One could not identify the British civil service system with that which operated 60 years ago. We are the only people who have retained it. The Minister should bring us up to date and see that promotion in the semi-State bodies and in the civil service does not depend on years of service. Promotion should be based on ability and on a person's acumen in whatever sector he or she is employed.
Too many people are just passing away the time in safe jobs and are not pulling their weight. There are too many young people who are intelligent and have great industry and guile who are being kept down. We have a parish priest system of promotion in our State and semi-State bodies. Some people will be aggrieved by my saying that promotion should not go on years of service, but somebody will always be hurt. It is in the interests of the nation to see that the best people are where it matters. One area where it matters is in the industrial relations sector.
We hear from people involved in strikes in the public sector that they are frustrated by management which could not care less or which treats them like dirt. There has to be a change in our attitude. It behoves the Minister to see that all Departments take a good look at themselves and see that they are efficiently run and that employees are not frustrated due to the type of lethargy which I have mentioned. People in secure employment are not too worried whether a strike drags on or not because they will still be paid and will not be affected in the long run. We must be more dynamic and willing to chop and change and train key personnel.
I would like the Minister to tell me—I am not being contentious about this—are there training schemes for people involved in industrial relations in the public sector or is that solely confined to private industry? The answer may be that there is a vast amount of money made available by private industry for the training of their personnel in the industrial relations sector but that there is a minimum opportunity in the public sector for training people who work in a similar capacity. This problem is increasing in volume year after year. There should be concerted efforts to see that anyone involved in management in the public sector has basic training and has an opportunity of going on refresher courses frequently to keep up to date with new processes, new employment schemes and with new methods in public relations. This has not been happening.
I am a member of a local authority and have seen the working of local authorities at first hand. I can see why there are strikes in the public sector. There is little or no training in personnel management or in industrial relations. The people involved may be very good at their own job. I refer to county managers, county secretaries and executives of regional health boards. They worked their way up through the ranks but when it comes to handling employees in lower grades they quite often fall down in the job very badly. I would like the Minister to bear in mind the agitation that lack of qualification in this field can lead to. When one has dissatisfied employees one has trouble on one's hands. We have seen this in regard to the engineers strikes in local authorities. They have dragged on and on and have done immense damage to the goodwill which existed between the employees and local authorities. Much of the blame lay with the county managers' association. Their off-hand treatment of the engineers accentuated the problem. This permeates throughout semi-State bodies whether it is CIE or the ESB, and in the civil service.
Another reason for the industrial relations problem in recent years has been the fact that the private sector has outstripped the public sector when it comes to wages and salaries. The security which existed in the public sector and which was compensation at one time is no longer sufficient compensation these days. People like teachers and engineers are well qualified and up to recently they were getting a reasonable amount of remuneration and were reasonably happy. Since the economic boom in the sixties the money in the private sector has far outstripped the money paid in the public sector. In disputes such as the postmen's dispute at present the source of the dissatisfaction emanates from falling behind in remuneration. School teachers, gardai and engineers are all sore.
Money is the root of all evil but it is a source of great discontent when one sees someone with inferior or no qualifications earning far in excess of what one is getting for doing a good job. Take the case of a school teacher who sees someone who cannot pass the intermediate certificate and who, five years later, is whizzing around in a company car with all expenses paid and getting a huge salary. These things grate. We are bound to have the kind of agitation we are having at present. There are bound to be demands for large wage and salary increases. I do not say there is an easy answer. I do not say that the Minister, by waving a wand, can solve the problem. I am not blaming anyone in particular. It is a natural evolution that when there is an economic boom somebody will be left behind. The people in the public sector have been left behind. We have to bear that in mind and, while the inequalities cannot be redressed in a short time, we should see to it that everything that can be done to make things easier should be done.
The Minister should review the industrial relations set-up in the civil service, in the semi-State bodies and in the local authorities. That is where the problem has been in recent years. It will continue and will more than likely multiply and it must be faced. It is not always money that causes the problem, although that is the primary cause. I worked in England years ago and saw vicious fights break out in Irish dancehalls. I automatically thought that the problem was due to drink, women or disputes over hurling and football matches. I asked an old lag who was working with me about it and he said that the problem was all about money, that generally what happened was that where men were doing the same work one of them would be getting a backhander from the boss, and when the others got to hear of it all hell would break loose. The jealousies and the problems which arise and the trouble which follows mainly emanate from people thinking they are worth more than they are getting and knowing that other people are getting more than they are entitled to. When it comes to being bosses Irish people generally are not the best. We tend to have a slave-driver attitude which I suppose comes from being oppressed for so long. When we get the chance we like to take it out on somebody else. It is a failing that comes to the surface when someone who has not been in charge is put in charge. This is a trait which I do not see in other nationalities and it does not help our industrial relations problems. This is a generalisation and I know that some individuals are outstanding.
The extraordinary thing about labour relations situation here is that the people on the trade union side seem to be extremely well qualified to do their jobs. I have listened to people, sometimes public representatives, castigating trade union officials and trade unions for being the cause of all the industrial unrest and disputes. From my experience, shop stewards are very well briefed and very well educated to perform their duties. The major unions take great care to see that their people do courses and examinations and visit other countries to study labour relations. Generally, trade unionists are the most conscientious members of the public. I am convinced that the wrongs generally lie on the employer side. Whether that is in the private or the public sector is not significant. Trade union officials generally know what they are talking about and are generally reasonable. The nasty or uninformed attitude usually comes from the management side. The unions take great care that their people who do the negotiating know what they are doing, that they are educated, well briefed and that they understand industrial relations rules, but the management side by virtue of their position seem to think that it is sufficient to talk down to these people. Far from being sufficient that only adds to the fury of the employees concerned. There is obviously a lesson to be learned here. While management in many cases is extremely poor, the efficiency of the trade union officials is high, except where union officials are out to make capital out of a strike. That does not often happen, except sometimes at the top, where a trade union official might use a strike to make a name for himself or to build a reputation as a strong man.
A lot of the subject matter of the Minister's statement is just rigmarole. We stated publicly that we agreed with the concept of the national understanding. Why it was changed from "national wage pact" to "national understanding" I will never know. I presume it was because the trade union movement in general stated that they would not have another national wage agreement. Surely it is the same thing, but if it is not will the Minister please say what the difference is?
It is broader.
Yes, but for all practical purposes it is the same thing. I presume that our spokesman, Deputy Mitchell, was rather critical of some of the schemes referred to, such as the Youth Employment Scheme and the Employment Action Team, and that is his right. One scheme which has been particularly ineffective is the environmental improvement scheme programme. I do not see the advantage of it at all. One might as well pay the people dole as give them work in that line. There has been no effective outcome from the type of work they do and when there is no long term future in the thing I cannot see the sense of it. The money could be spent in a more constructive manner.
At Question Time today we dealt with the employment maintenance scheme which is a very valuable scheme. I know it might raise a few hackles in the EEC but it certainly is an advantage where an industry is in trouble. I will refer now to the problems that Irish Leathers had earlier this year. The eventual payment of money to this firm under the employment maintenance scheme had a lot to do with saving jobs. The pity is that the money was not paid sooner. It might have put a lot of minds at rest and we would not have had to wait four or five months until the jobs were secured. Of course that is no use to the people in Gorey who lost out, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows very well.
Do not ask the Chair to comment on that, please.
I know the Chair will want to hear about it. I cannot understand how the EEC allows such a differential between the amount allowed in Britain and in Ireland. We know that the weekly amount allowed in Britain is £20 whereas we are paying £5. It suits us to pay £5 if we can get away with it, but surely, when similar industries are in trouble in Britain and in Ireland, the fact that they pay £20 per week in Britain must mean that the corresponding British industry has a far greater chance of survival. Has the Minister any views on that type of equality? We saw it in the recent Irish Leathers dilemma when similar industries in Britain were shored up, and have been shored up for a number of years, because of the vast amounts of moneys being paid out of the employment maintenance scheme. It seems a little odd that two countries in the same economic community can have such unequal terms.
I was gratified to hear that part of the Minister's speech dealing with emigrant services. I asked for a debate on this subject last year. An advisory committee on emigrant services is to be set up and assistance is to be given to Irish centres in Britain to employ social welfare personnel. I am very familiar with problems in this regard and have visited the major centre in Camden Square to see the fantastic work being done. These people have been let down over the years by successive Irish Governments, who have not provided any practical aid, and they have had to rely completely for financial assistance on the British Government. I would ask the Minister to tell us exactly what form the assistance will take.
The Minister referred to the shortage of skilled people in crafts and trades. A shortfall of 2,000 has been mentioned, though I am not sure if this is the Minister's figure. What plans has the Minister to make up that shortfall? With such a major unemployment problem it seems extraordinary that there are certain trades and professions in which vacancies cannot be filled by trained personnel. The Minister should outline his plans to deal with this problem. He mentioned shortages of engineers, computer personnel, electronic technicians, draftsmen, engineering and construction craftsmen and sewing machinists. Because of the number of regional colleges established during the past ten years one would have imagined that there would not be any shortage of these skills. The regional colleges can cater for these skills and they have been a great boon to industry. What plans has the Minister to make up these deficiencies?
I have a little experience of computer personnel because I was approached some months ago by a person interested in giving instruction on computers. I have put down a question to the Minister for Education asking if he will make computer training part of the syllabus for the intermediate and leaving certificates. A lot of schools are now doing computer training but on a very restricted basis because they have not the teachers. Those who are involved in teaching this subject picked up their skills during the summer courses. This matter is of such importance that there should be a recognised course in most secondary schools and in the regional colleges. I understand that the only place in which this is being done at the moment is Limierick. There is great scope for expansion of this sector.
There are rumblings of dissatisfaction in the civil service because people employed in the computer section are in such demand that they are being promoted at an extraordinary rate. People who have no training in this field are annoyed to see young people passing them out, perhaps within two years, because of the shortage in this sector. I said earlier that there should not be automatic promotion, but in this case it arises because there is a major deficiency and undoubtedly it causes dissatisfaction. I know people who feel that this is unfair and I should like the Minister's views.
The Minister of State at the Department of Finance, who is in charge of the Office of Public Works, has said that they cannot get enough engineers. The primary reason is that they are not allowed to pay the going rate and private industry is offering higher salaries. If a salary increase is given in the Office of Public Works it must be given in other sections also and would apply through the local authority system. However, we must pay the going rate.
It is in order to deal with the shortage of skilled personnel, but the Minister has no responsibility for remuneration in the public service or anywhere else.
If there is a shortage, we are entitled to know why. It is a serious matter when jobs are not filled in a situation of grave unemployment.
I do not know if the Minister has any intention of operating a profit-sharing scheme in industry. This is an idea which might be explored. It has operated very successfully in other countries and there seems to be scope for it here. It could be operated to some extent in the public sector and would help to create a better climate of industrial relations. It is a laudable idea and the companies concerned could be given concessions in regard to corporation taxes.
I have spoken mainly about the growing unrest in the public sector for which the Minister is being blamed. I am sure Deputy Mitchell tackled him on that issue. People are asking what action the Minister is taking in the Post Office dispute and why the bus maintenance dispute and the binmen's strike were not settled sooner. I will not start a witch-hunt; we will have enough of that from Deputy Mitchell. Those are the questions to which we should like to have replies. In particular we should like the Minister to tell us the effort he is making to ensure that the industrial relations situation within the Civil Service and in semi-State bodies is improved. Can he give us any hope of improvement in that regard?
I was not present during the Minister's speech this morning but in the meantime I have had an opportunity of reading the speech in detail. It is a speech that raises far more issues than I can hope to deal with in satisfactory detail in the time allowed but I propose to begin by referring briefly to the last and what was obviously to the Minister one of the more important parts of his address. I refer to the proposed national understanding on wages and related matters. I wish to raise this matter simply in order to point out that it is very dangerous for elected public representatives, regardless of whether they are members of trade unions, regardless of how concerned they may be for the welfare of the country, to intervene, however well meaningly, in the orderly and responsible progress of negotiations between the trade union movement and employers and, necessarily, the Government.
I have every confidence in the sense of responsibility and of national purpose of the trade union movement. I recognise the urgency and the concern that the Minister has expressed in relation to the national understanding. It is not my position here to express an opinion one way or the other except to say that if for some reason or other the national understanding is not accepted by the trade union movement, my belief in the responsibility of that movement will not be weakened and that I would not regard such failure as a precipice over which the nation would fall. I am confident that the trade union movement would deal with that situation as they have dealt with situations leading up to the initialling of the national understanding. I must leave the matter there in deference to the responsibilities of the trade union movement, responsibilities that are serious in this matter.
In his address the Minister said that:
I continue to receive demands for more legislation—legislation outlawing strikes and pickets, legislation providing for cooling-off periods and so on.
The Minister continued:
So far I have resisted these demands, believing that sanity will prevail in industrial relations....
Further, the Minister continued:
However, if small groups persist in pursuing their own interests to the detriment of the community at large, the elected representatives of the people may have to consider seriously whether the public interest requires some measures to be taken to protect the people's interests, especially where services and supplies essential to the life of the people are affected.
I was glad of the Minister's first statement in so far as it went. I would agree with him when he says he believes he is expressing the sentiments of all right-thinking people in saying that this is not too much to expect. Of course it is not too much to expect. The trade union movement have fulfilled their responsibilities with a large measure of success throughout the history of the State. There is no greater proportion of irresponsible people in the trade union movement than there is in this House or in any sector of public life outside. But I must warn the Minister and I must urge him to steel himself even further, if necessary, against calls for unnecessary further legislation which might be based on a purely panic reaction to a short-term situation. My reason for this is that there is a fundamental principle underlying the conduct of the trade union movement and this is the same fundamental principle that underlines our existence here in this House. I refer to the principle of the democratic management of their affairs. The trade union movement is a democratic movement. Its decisions, whether right or wrong, are democratic decisions. The same applies to us here. Any attempt unnecessarily to curtail or abrogate the right of the trade union movement to behave in a democratic manner would, in some small but not unimportant way, run the risk of chipping away at the democracy which we embody in this House.
It is undeniable that in certain circumstances wrong decisions will be taken but the answer to that problem is not to remove or to interfere unnecessarily with the mechanisms by which decisions are arrived at. The answer is to promote, not only within the trade union movement but within the country generally and within the relationships between all sectors of the community, that kind of sanity of which the Minister has expressed himself as favouring within the trade union movement. Sometimes it is a little unreasonable to expect sanity to prevail only within the trade union movement. We must be fair to all sectors of the community in this regard. If we are to expect sanity from the trade union movement, and we have a right to expect nothing less from them, that sanity will be wisely and generally forthcoming but we must also seek sanity from other sections of the community.
In this context again I would point out to the Minister's speech where, in relation to industrial relations he said:
Without prejudice to what the Commission on Industrial Relations may suggest, I would like to say that one conclusion I have come to is that a change in basic attitudes is essential if we are to have a real improvement in industrial relations.
With all respect to the Minister—and I respect his sincerity in this—to talk about a change in attitudes as if attitudes were independent of circumstances, is pious nonsense. Attitudes are born in people because of the context in which these people operate. If people operate in the context of a society which encourages certain kinds of attitudes they will tend to reflect those kinds of attitudes. Attitudes are born also out of power relationships. It is not surprising sometimes that we find the relatively powerless expressing somewhat negative attitudes towards the relatively powerful especially when there is no objective or readily visible reason for the rich and powerful to be the rich and powerful. It is asking a lot—but I am not saying that it is asking too much—to ask for almost unilateral restraint from the trade union movement at a time when we are told that the highest paid executive in the country takes home approximately £4,500 per week after tax and before perks.
Would the Deputy repeat the sentence after "change of attitudes". I did not select one side or the other. I said there was need for change on both sides.
I accept what the Minister has said and I will read the sentence so that it will go into the record. He said "One of the ways in which this change can be achieved is through a better informed trade union movement and a more open approach on the part of employers".
The point I am trying to make is that attitudes, information, and open approaches themselves count for not a great deal if the basic power relationship in society remains unchallenged. I do not think anybody who has ever taken part in the trade union movement at any level would accept—although some people do—that there should be, even in theory, a total equality of remuneration for work done right across the table in every sector of society. A large part of the activity of the trade union movement is based on the maintenance—and in some cases even development—of pay differentials. One of the sane and reasonable political arguments that we have in society concerns the degree to which acceptable differentials can exist in a society that likes to call itself a fair society. We are talking here of a case, admittedly perhaps an extreme case, but it is an actual case, in which the take-home pay of one individual in our society——
The Deputy should not refer to an identifiable person outside the House.
I was not aware that I had given sufficient information to enable the person to be identified.
The Deputy has already stated that there is only one such in the country, so I presume he is identifiable by that. The Deputy can make his case without bringing in any particular case.
That is not Deputy Horgan's form.
May I say here that I am not implying any criticism of the individual concerned? I am simply using the particular case as an example of what the system allows to happen in our society.
What the Chair is saying to the Deputy is that he should not use, as an example, a particular case where the person—a person outside the House—might be identifiable. That has always been the rule of the House.
In that case I shall put my example in an entirely hypothetical context. I would ask the House is it possible even to consider that any society could be a fair society in which, in a hypothetical, given case, one person could take home a multiple of 500 or 600 times the average take-home pay of an industrial male worker? I do not believe that any such society could categorise itself as a fair society. This is an area in which legitimate political differences exist. I do not think that any individual in any society anywhere in the globe is worth, in terms of hard cash, 500 or 600 times what any other person is worth. In passing, I might remind the Minister that on the first famous PAYE demonstration, the Sunday one, quite a few of the banners—I suspect many of them carried by people who voted for his party—urged the Government to bring back the wealth tax.
When we consider this kind of differential in the context of the need to develop responsibility and orderly progress and negotiations in industrial relations, we must ask ourselves: are we heading in the right direction? If there is a sense in which the trade union movement at any particular point in time is looking for more, in this particular context it is not the politics of envy, it is more the politics of anger. Even at that, I am not entirely convinced that the politics of envy would always need to be deprecated, because they simply imply that in a certain society some resources are scarcer than others and the politics of envy are a response to a situation in which the distribution of these scarce resources is not related to need.
I shall not develop the theme of industrial relations any further, except to quote very briefly from the editorial in this morning's Irish Times which—fortuitously, I must imagine, because I doubt that it was written with a view to the debate here this afternoon—refers directly to the question of industrial relations. The first two paragraphs of this editorial read, and I do not propose to quote any more:
Send Fianna Fail to Europe?
Send them to Devil's Island, rather.
Send them to Van Diemen's Land.
Send them somewhere; for never in
the last half century of Irish history can there have been an Administration which promised more and fell down more.
My goodness me.
They do not read that in Dingle.
They do, indeed.
If they do not read that in Dingle, I daresay Deputy Begley will bring it to their attention in a relatively short space of time.
Indeed, they do.
To sum up this section of what I have to say, the Government themselves, by promises and, in a sense both by the promises they implemented and those they failed to implement, have created a climate of false expectancy which has led to a major souring of the whole climate of industrial relations and which is largely responsible for all their present troubles.
Regarding industrial relations in the public service, I have only this to say, and it is in relation to the Post Office dispute, that, whatever its merits internally—and I am not presuming to comment on those—I have a distinct feeling that the present confrontation between the Government and the Post Office Workers' Union is a result of the Post Office Workers' Union being chosen as a scapegoat. The Government are determined, through it, to teach all the other public service unions a lesson and to make sure there is no untoward militancy in this area. They may be successful in this endeavour, but the long-term consequences of success in this particular matter may be very substantial. We do not just need a change in attitudes, better information and a more open approach; we need a real shift in the balance of power and resources in our community.
In relation to youth employment, I was glad to see that the Minister made some reference to this, but I must ask the Minister and through him his colleagues to desist, at least to some extent, from the habit of double- and treble-counting in relation to, particularly, youth employment schemes. The Minister's heart must have fallen when he heard on the news this morning or saw in the newspapers that the Minister for Finance had announced a further £3 million scheme for youth employment. Exactly the same scheme appears on page 4 of his own departmental script this morning. There are, unfortunately, some members of my own profession, journalism, whose memories are not long enough to enable them to recognise always that something which is announced on Monday may also have been announced on the previous Friday, and who may be unwitting agents of conveying to the public that the exact effect of what is being done is twice as large as it really is. One of these days I hope we will have from the Government a clear, unadorned ballot sheet of the total youth employment since they came into office where all the schemes will appear once only and where all the jobs will be fully and deliberately annotated. The Government do themselves a disservice by failing to do this. Of course, it is partly because the responsibility for youth employment is diverted between various Ministers and Education is involved as well as Labour. It would be interesting to see a national, interdepartmental, unadorned ballot sheet of this kind.
Another important thing in relation to youth employment schemes is the possibility at least that some employers are using young people simply as cheap labour. I know that the Minister would be horrified at such a prospect, but I have no doubt that it is happening here and there and that employers, while paying the wages stipulated in the scheme, are getting considerably more out of young people by making them work very much longer hours than workers normally do. I ask him to keep an eye on the monitoring of such schemes to make sure that organisations—voluntary organisations as well as ordinary commercial undertakings—do not exploit the opportunities offered by these various schemes in order to use young people as cheap labour. The success of the schemes, where they have been successful, as the Minister has pointed out, is that in many cases they have led directly to permanent full-time employment for the young people concerned. Against that we must offset the hidden cost of areas in which exploitation takes place. If the first experience that young people have of work is of being exploited, their attitude to work in later life will be at the best somewhat marred.
The total number of young people who have taken part in the various schemes under the auspices of the Department so far, large though it is, is still ultimately not large enough. We can show how far it falls short of the overall need by comparing the total numbers of young people who participate in such courses and employment exercises with the total number of young people who are seeking work including those seeking work for the first time. Unemployment, like emigration, does not hit all members of the community equally. It hits young people much harder than it hits others. One of the most scarifying social statistics of which I have been made aware recently is the approximately 55 per cent of our total unemployed, which must represent 55,000 people including those unemployed seeking work for the first time, who comprise young people between the ages of 15 and 29. That is a terrifying statistic which the Minister might admit not all the youth employment schemes in the world will solve ultimately. Youth employment schemes will help. They will relieve the pressure here and there. They will provide genuine opportunities for numbers of young people. However, the size of that problem, the 50,000 or so people between 15 and 29 years of age in our country who are unemployed is such as to demand more radical measures than are proposed in this Department's brief or in the Government's programme.
I would make one further point on youth employment, and I urge the attention of the Minister to it. In many parts of his brief he spoke of the question of the ability of his Department to get funds from the EEC for various experiments of an employment nature. One fund of which he spoke helps to provide money for the exchange of young workers within the countries of the Community. I would hate to see this kind of scheme being buried in the small print of a ministerial Estimate speech. I would like to see this scheme developed and made a cornerstone of the relationships between young working people in both parts of this island. There are no nationalist overtones in this. There is no flag-waving and no superficial patriotism, but there is the best patriotism of all. Such a scheme implemented between employers, trade unions, Governments and governmental agencies on both sides of the Border could over a long period—and this is an area where we should be prepared to wait for a long time—do more for national understanding on this island than tens of thousands of average allegedly patriotic speeches on the issue. We have been talking about national understanding. A youth exchange scheme of the type I am talking about could promote another kind of national understanding which would be at the very least as valuable as the one at present under consideration by the trade union movement.
The Minister referred to AnCO. While we are always glad to see further education and training opportunities being made available to young people, at the same time we must be aware of simply using AnCO and the enormous EEC subvention which they attract as a kind of mopping-up operation designed to take people, especially young people, off the unemployment register for a certain time. We would like to know what proportion of the young people, and the not so young people, who have had training and re-training courses from AnCO do succeed in getting permanent paid employment and what proportion of them have to apply for other AnCO courses or simply relapse again into unemployment. This is another important area.
Earlier today we were discussing the question of the handicapped in the context of the Employment Equality Act. At Question Time today the Minister made clear to me that, while he sympathised with the general problem of providing suitable facilities for the handicapped and was doing as much as he could in the public sector to make sure that facilities for the handicapped, especially those in wheelchairs, were made available, his role in relation to the private sector was merely that of encouraging. With due respect to him, he can do a little bit more than encourage the private sector. Tens of thousands of pounds are being handed out by his Department every day of the week to private employers under various employment incentives schemes. He should at least investigate the possibility that a not unreasonable condition of making such money available to private employers would be that they should not discriminate against handicapped people in wheelchairs simply because of their lack of ability. In relation to all such applications for employment incentive grants he should make sure that in cases when an applicant's physical handicap is not per se any barrier to doing the task involved in his employment, he should not be denied arbitrarily equal consideration as an applicant for a job simply because he happens to be in a wheelchair. I admit that the administrative problems are very substantial, but we should be moving in this direction. The Minister has leverage in the private sector because less and less are they the private sector and more and more are they getting help of one kind or another from the State. If the State is going to give help to the private sector and to industry at the same time it should be encouraging that private industry to adopt more equitable standards in its dealings with its workforce.
In relation to the work of the National Manpower Service, I welcome the increase in the number of placement officers and the expansion of the placement service. I urge the Minister to make sure that he wastes no opportunity to ensure that the staff in all these offices are sensitive enough to deal with the many delicate problems that may come their way. I will give the Minister an example of what I mean because a very tragic case came to my notice recently. There is an office in the Manpower Service—I do not want to identify the office concerned because, I do not want to bring retribution on the person involved—where jobs are advertised, among other ways, on a notice board. I know of a young person who went into this office and asked about finding a job. He was referred to the notice board. He told the person behind the desk that he could not read and the person behind the desk, who may have been harassed, said, "In that case you will have to bring a friend". I know it is not the Minister's intention that this kind of thing should happen but it is a fact of life in our society that there are still young adult illiterates whose illiteracy is one of their major handicaps in preventing them from getting jobs. While I appreciate that the Minister cannot devote his personal attention to every minute detail, I am telling him the story as an indication that however far we have got we should not be complacent about the distance we have to travel.
The Minister's remarks in relation to overtime were very interesting and I look forward to further development in this area. I would refer him, if he is not already aware of it, to an interesting official document which gives the average hours worked in various industries in the State. In relation to one industry, which I do not want to name, he will find that the average hours worked are within an hour or an hour and a half of the maximum number of hours legally allowable in the industry concerned. If the average is almost at the level of the maximum, the law is obviously being broken in terms of the number of hours worked. It is one thing to look for voluntary restrictions on overtime so as to create further employment but it is another thing to turn the blind eye to overtime being worked in breach of the law. If we are serious about employment creation we should also be looking at this matter.
In relation to redundancy, I should like to bring the Minister's attention to one serious anomaly which has arisen in the implementation of the redundancy employment scheme as recently changed, that is, that a person's entitlement to a continuation of weekly payments upto the maximum to which he is entitled is seriously affected and may be totally destroyed if he fails to pick up his redundancy in any particular week. I know of a case where a person's further entitlement to the remainder of his redundancy was abolished because he failed to claim his redundancy one week. He had failed to turn up because he had a heart attack and had to go to hospital. The idea that anybody should be deprived of his redundancy money in those circumstances is horrific.
Will the Deputy give me details of that case?
I will give the Minister the details in private tomorrow. The final point I would make is in relation to what I think is the Government's greatest political triumph to date. Their greatest political triumph to date has been to divert public attention and to change the tone of public rhetoric away from the problem of unemployment, which we always thought was the real problem, and towards job creation. Jobs are always being created, but for as long as I sit in this House Fianna Fáil will not be allowed to talk about the unemployment problem solely in terms of job creation. It was on the unemployment problem and on an alleged cure for the unemployment problem that they were returned to office and it is on that they will be judged in the next election.
The first thing that strikes me is the conspicuous absence of Fianna Fáil speakers in this important debate. One is led to all sorts of conjectures as to why Fianna Fáil backbenchers have boycotted this debate. Are they so embarrassed by the state of industrial unrest that they are afraid to say anything about it, or are they so embarrassed by their Minister that they are not prepared to give him a word of encouragement? The answer is obvious. It seems that the Minister has lost the confidence even of his own party. Where have they been all day?
Out canvassing.
They will have some job canvassing because I hear that the reaction they are getting at doorsteps is priceless. However, the country is delighted that the Minister has decided to come into the House today. The Minister spoke for more than one and a half hours. Some parts of his script sounded like stuff you can get in any library. So far the Minister has not referred to the reason why the country is at a standstill. Is there a human element in the Minister? Are the Government and the Minister allowing the civil service to make the decisions? Everybody knows that civil servants are afraid to be adventurous. When all other procedures fail, when the old age pensioners have to collect their pensions at presbyteries, it is surely time that the Minister tried to do something about the matter. The anxiety and frustration that has spread across the nation will be voiced three weeks from today when the Government will get their answer through their candidates—urban, county council and European.
The human element in the Irish race is very strong. The noses of those involved in industrial disputes should not be rub-bed in the gutter and dragged along. That is not good enough and it is not the answer to the problem. The Minister should not sit idly by while there are hundreds of jobs at stake in the Post Office dispute. In the south-west, particularly in the Dingle peninsula, we are completely cut off; we have no post and no telephones.
The Chair must repeat the ruling it gave this morning.
The Chair is very edgy on this subject.
Will the Deputy please listen for one minute?
Of course the Chair is embarrassed.
Will the Deputy please withdraw that charge?
I will change it to "upset".
The Chair is not embarrassed. The Chair gave a ruling this morning which was accepted by every Deputy who has spoken on this debate. The ruling was that any Deputy could refer to any dispute but could not go into detail, and that rule holds. The Post Office dispute is a matter for another Minister and it can be raised on his Estimate. I am allowing the Deputy to refer to it in passing, but that is all.
The people of Kerry sent me here to use any opportunity I can to draw attention to the hundreds of jobs that are at stake in the tourist industry which will involve payments from different Ministers. The Minister for Labour was recently in Killarney and he presented certificates to CERT trainees. He speaks at length here about CERT.
It is a very good organisation and is doing tremendous work, but all the people who were presented with certificates are involved in the tourist industry and there are no jobs for them.
I can get jobs for them if the Deputy will pass their names on to me afterwards.
That is very good. Further on that issue, the tourist industry has collapsed for the moment so far as my area is concerned. There has been a depression all over the area. That is as much as I will say. I am now telling the Minister to wake up and do something about the Post Office dispute. He has sat idly by too long and everybody knows it. I would urge the Minister, even at this late stage, to approach the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry and tell him not to put another 20 or 30 workmen from the Dingle boatyards on the dole. That should not be too much to ask of the Minister.
That does not arise on this Estimate. The Minister present has no responsibility for the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry.
He is in charge of the Department of Labour.
It arises on another Estimate.
As I already said, the Deputy has a brief to speak for ten minutes and that is his problem.
I am speaking about issues that affect the lives of the people who sent me here.
The Deputy is speaking about issues that do not arise on this Vote.
So far as the small amount of time I have left is concerned, if the Chair took out his stopwatch he would find that he had taken up most of the time.
The Chair will not have most of the time if the Deputy speaks relevantly to the Vote.
I am speaking on issues concerning the Department of Labour. If the Minister is not interested in the Dingle boatyard or the Post Office workers or in what people are saying around the country, be it on his head. In reply to a question here today on the Social Fund he said that there was £24 million available and that only £10 million was taken out of it.
That is not correct. If the Deputy would study the question he would see that what he is saying is not correct.
That is the implication that can be drawn from it.
The Deputy obviously cannot understand the subject.
I can understand it, of course. Can the Minister tell us how much money was left over for the last few years? Did the Minister take every penny that was allowed to him?
The Deputy has misread the situation and I do not want him making stupid allegations.
The Minister will have an opportunity to reply. Would Deputy Begley speak through the Chair please.
I hate arguing with the Chair because it does not get any of us anywhere, but I must say this. The Chair is taking up most of my time.
The Deputy is arguing with the Chair but he will not do anything about obeying the Chair. The Chair is only making the ordinary approaches to the Deputy that he makes to every Deputy and every other Deputy simply obeys the Chair and gets on and makes a good speech and no more difficulty is had.
In the Minister's brief it was really conspicuous that he made no mention at all of the fishermen. I remember standing up here the last time the Minister's Estimate came before us and I urged that certain safety precautions should be taken by the Department of Labour so far as the fishermen were concerned. It is ridiculous that the State, through An Bord Iascaigh Mhara, will give a substantial grant to people to buy a boat without knowing whether these people are qualified to use that boat or not. I will give the Minister an instance. Down in my own town a certain individual bought a boat, got his crew and went off outside the Blaskets where he has lobster pots. He set the pots along an island. Lo and behold, he came back in four hours; the tide had gone out and all the pots were sitting on the rocks. That man and his crew were the luckiest people that they were not all lost. That situation should not happen. I would urge the Minister to get his Department to call in the people who are involved in this, An Bord Iascaigh Mhara or the Minister for Fisheries and Forestry as the case may be, to work out regulations to ensure that before anybody qualifies for a grant to take a boat to sea, whether it is a launch, a trawler or a secondhand trawler, at least they know where they are going, know the chart of the currents, know where the rocks are so that that situation would not arise. The Minister should look very closely at that point. The Department of Labour should also insist that any man who goes aboard a launch or a trawler to make fishing his livelihood should at least be able to swim. These are points that are obvious to everyone.
The same is true as far as ferries are concerned. It is ridiculous in this day and age that ferries are operating between islands with no regulations whatsoever as to the number of people who can board those ferries. Maybe it is the local authority that is at fault but the Minister for Labour should prosecute the local authorities if they are not making the necessary by-laws about this. Must we wait until a tragedy occurs before something is done? It is ridiculous to have overloaded boats taking people to the Blasket Islands. Everybody knows this is happening, but people want to make a fast buck. They might be providing a service but they are also making a fast buck.
The Chair is not too sure that any of this is the responsibility of the Minister for Labour.
I am just making the point.
Will the Deputy move the adjournment of the debate?
Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 22 May 1979.