The Supplementary Estimate for the Office of the Minister for Labour has five components; an additional £255,000 under subhead H — Resettlement Allowances; an additional £104,500 under subhead O — Grants for Trade Union Education and Advisory Services; an additional £300,000 under subhead U — Work Experience Programme; a sum of £20,000 under a new subhead, subhead Z — Training and Employment of Young Persons including Youth Employment Agency; and to balance the foregoing an increase of £679,490 under subhead Y — Appropriations-in-Aid.
The resettlement assistance scheme provides financial assistance to persons changing their normal place of residence to take up employment offered through or approved by the National Manpower Service where vacancies cannot be filled locally. In 1979, the Manpower Consultative Committee proposed a skills recruitment campaign abroad to attract key workers who were at that time in short supply here. The campaign was duly carried out and there was a further similar campaign in 1980.
The Committee saw the resettlement assistance scheme as a vital instrument for attracting such skilled workers and, to this end, the scheme was adapted to offer special inducements to these persons. A higher level of grants was offered to skilled workers coming from abroad and a special disturbance grant was introduced for key workers taking up employment here as a result of these campaigns. Eligibility for this grant continues for two years after settling to take up employment here.
There is an inevitable time lag in attending to removal formalities and, as a consequence, applications from eligible workers who responded to the recruitment campaigns are still coming to hand. Since mid-1979, about 640 workers have resettled from abroad with the assistance of the scheme to date; of these some 400 may qualify for the special grant. Expenditure under the resettlement assistance scheme has risen from £138,000 in 1979 to £415,000 in 1980 and prospectively to £475,000 in 1981, due mainly to resettlement from abroad in which these campaigns referred to have been a major factor.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions receives an annual grant from the Labour Vote towards costs incurred in its education, training and advisory services. It has been decided to supplement the level of this grant in 1981 arising from the enactment of the Safety in Industry Act, 1980. This Act makes compulsory the establishment of a consultative system between employers and employees on matters of occupational safety and health. The relevant part of the Act came into operation on 1 April 1981.
Workers were given the right to make within the following six months, up to 30 September 1981, the necessary appointments from their side to a safety committee or, if appropriate, having regard to the number of persons employed, to appoint a safety representative. If the workers failed to exercise their right by 30 September an onus of making the appropriate arrangements falls on the employer to do so within the following three months, up to 31 December 1981.
All safety committees are joint employer-employee bodies. Safety representatives, regardless of who appoints them, are drawn from the workers' side. Because of the requirement in the Act as regards the involvement of workers in the systems provided for, ICTU and affiliated unions have undertaken extensive publicity and training programmes connected with these committees and safety representatives. The extra grant of £104,500 under the subhead is intended as a contribution by the State towards the additional costs incurred by the trade unions in this work.
The Work Experience Programme has been in existence since 1978. Average weekly participation in 1980 was approximately 2,122 young people ranging from about 1,800 to 2,500 persons per week. In 1981 to date, weekly participation has ranged from 2,050 to 3,032 with an average of 2,349 per week. The original allocation under subhead U for 1981 is £2.1 million and this has not proved adequate to cater for the demands being made on the programme.
Apart from the continuing success of the programme, I am glad to be able to say that about 80 per cent of the participants obtained employment during or on completion of their assignment under the programme — about 50 per cent of these with the employer who provided the work experience opportunity. The additional allocation of £300,000 now sought is a measure of the success of the programme.
As the House will be aware from the recent debate on the Youth Employment Agency Bill, it is the intention that the Work Experience Programme will be funded through the agency from 1982 onwards and will, I hope, be considerably expanded by it.
As regards the funding of the Youth Employment Agency and the training and employment of young persons, Deputies will appreciate from the discussion on the Bill that it is necessary to provide for some preliminary expenditure in 1981, primarily in making arrangements for setting up the agency. A new subhead is accordingly included in this Supplementary Estimate for the purpose and a provision of £20,000 is proposed.
A token Supplementary Estimate only is required to finance the additional expenditure because appropriations-in-aid will exceed the provision provided for in the original Estimate. The increased appropriations-in-aid arise from receipts from the European Social Fund. I might mention that expenditure under both the work experience programme and the resettlement allowances scheme qualified for European Social Fund assistance, the effect of which is that the net cost to the Exchequer of these services is considerably less than the gross amounts provided for under the related subheads.
The Supplementary Estimate for the Office of the Minister for the Public Service is to meet additional expenditure on four subheads of the Vote — Salaries, Wages and Allowances; Office Machinery and other Office Supplies; Gaeleagras na Seirbhíse Poiblí and a grant-in-aid to the Institute of Public Administration. The total sum required for this additional expenditure is £615,000, of which £248,000 can be met from savings elsewhere on the Vote and from an increase in appropriations-in-aid. The net amount required, therefore, is £367,000.
On subhead A.1. — Salaries, Wages and Allowances — the extra amount required is £515,000. This is to meet the cost of pay increases and also of a number of new posts, mainly in the computer central unit of my Department, for which provision was not made in the original Estimate although in the case of the new posts most had been created before the Estimate was finalised. Provision for pay increases was, however, included in an allocation provided in the budget to cover possible pay increases in the public service generally.
An additional expenditure of £5,000 arises on subhead B.2. — Office Machinery and other Office Supplies — and is needed to meet the cost of replacing certain equipment and to allow for increased prices generally.
Is mar gheall ar leathnú ar réimse agus saghsanna cursaí i nGaeleagras atá an cúig míle (£5,000) breise ag teastáil faoi fó-mhircheann F. den Vóta.
The remaining increase of £90,000 is in respect of the grant-in-aid to the Institute of Public Administration. Again, this is to meet the cost in 1981 of pay increases for which provision was not included in the original Estimate.
As I have mentioned, the various increases have been offset by savings on other subheads, mainly £62,000 on subhead B.1. — Travelling and Incidental Expenses — and by an extra £176,000 obtained as receipts under appropriations-in-aid.
I turn now to Vote 21, the Vote for Superannuation and Retired Allowances, for which a net sum of £2.51 million in addition to the sum of £27.355 million originally estimated, is required to meet unavoidable outgoings in the current year. This Vote covers the cost of pensions and lump sums for civil servants and widows of civil servants and the Judiciary together with the increased cost of pensions under the annual pensions revision.
As levels of expenditure are determined by factors not under the control of the Vote it is difficult to predict the pattern of future expenditure. The basic reason for the additional provision now sought is to meet the increased pension costs resulting from various pay awards, the full extent of which could not be foreseen by Departments at the time the original Estimate was prepared. Also, some of these awards involved payment of arrears for significant periods.
The printed Supplementary Estimate for Remuneration as circulated is incorrectly numbered. The Vote number is 54, not 53. The amount of £1.484 million is required to meet the cost of pay increases on six Votes. The Votes concerned and the amount required for each Vote are set out in Part III of the Supplementary Estimate. The amount sought is required to meet the following increases — (i) the cost of certain miscellaneous pay increases and (ii) the increased cost of employers' pay-related social insurance contributions.
The 1981 Estimates Volume did not make provision for these increases as they did not arise in time for inclusion in the volume. The amount sought in the Supplementary Estimate is the cost of increases on the Votes mentioned, offset by savings on the Votes where such savings are available. In other Votes similar increases are either being met from savings or are being included as separate items in Supplementary Estimates for the Votes concerned. Particulars of such increases are also given in Part III of the Supplementary Estimate for Remuneration.
If Deputies require any further information on matters dealt with in these Supplementary Estimates I shall be pleased to furnish it.
