asked the Minister for the Public Service if he is aware of the criticism of the scheme to employ 1,000 temporary clerical trainees for a year at £60 per week made by public service unions; if it is intended to review or discontinue the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Temporary Clerical Trainees.
17.
Tá a fhios agam gur léirigh cuid de cheardchumainn na Seirbhíse Poiblí a dtuairimí ar an scéim. Níl sé ar intinn agam deireadh a chur leis an scéim. The scheme was announced in the Government White Paper "Serving the Country Better" in September 1985. At this stage we have experience of only one intake of 1,000 trainees, 50 of them disabled. The scheme was very popular with young people and with employing Departments. It should greatly help the trainees in their search for employment. Indeed, quite a number have already left for full time jobs even though there are still several weeks to go before the trainees will have completed their year's contract. I am keeping the scheme under continuous review to make it even more effective and successful.
Cen sórt jab díreach a bhí á dhéanamh ag na daoine seo agus an bhfuil an tAire sásta leis an job atá a dhéanamh acu?
Scéim taithí oibre is ea é, is é sin le rá, a work experience programme. As to what they are specifically doing, I could indicate without giving exact details that they are getting work experience. I investigated the training aspect and asked, when I was announcing the scheme for the further 1,000 school leavers, that my officials would brief me on the kind of training these 1,000 school leavers will be getting. I was advised that after intake there would be a short period of induction training at the start, then there would be on-the-job training in which the disciplines of clerical work will be inculcated, including accuracy, punctuality and higher output. Later in the year there will be some formal off-the-job training, but this will not be extensive. The important thing is to have the trainees learn to do a job by doing it. Some criticisms were made in the past that they had not a wide enough work experience. That was a legitimate criticism. I am anxious we ensure that the future trainees will be given experience of more than one kind of work.
The Minister's statement is that there is, in fact, no job training whatsoever, that they are brought in to a job and told to do the best job that they can and they do the work. I am asking if the Minister is satisfied with the work they are doing. They are doing a nine to five job for which they are being paid £60 a week. They are not just trainees. Is it not true that they are actually doing a job of work and if they are doing a job of work, are they not doing somebody else out of that job? It is obvious this is a cheap labour scheme. They are doing a full job of work, learning the experience by doing that work but, nevertheless, only getting £60 a week for it. Is that not cheap labour?
I do not accept that assertion at all. Not one civil servant has been, or will be, displaced by trainees. On the question of what the trainees are doing, I must repeat this is a work experience programme. I mentioned earlier that there are different formal aspects of training but, as in my former days as a solicitor's apprentice, the best training to be got was on the job.
Solicitors' offices require cheap labour as well.
When I was a solicitor's apprentice the weekly return was nil, but they were different days. I want to emphasise that we are not talking about a salary in the full sense, we are talking about a trainee allowance when these young people are going through a work experience programme.
Cé mhéid post sna grádanna ísle sa Státseirbhís a bhfuil bac orthu faoi láthair?
Does this question relate to TCTs?
Yes, those on the lower grade. I want to know the number of frozen posts in the lower grades consequent on the embargo.
In relation to the TCTs, we propose to hold a special competition for those who are left on the first intake. Already there are 150 who have gone off into full employment, probably helped on considerably by the training they got under this scheme. We propose to hold a special competition for about 100 of the existing TCTs to enable that number to be brought in on a permanent basis into the Civil Service.
My question concerns the number of embargoed posts in the lower grades of the public service. Has the Minister that figure? I am interested in the number of posts in the CA and CO grades which are frozen by the present embargo. This is relevant. I continue to make the same point Deputy Mac Giolla has made in this House — that there has been a standstill in the past three years under the embargo on posts in the lower grades of the Civil Service, particularly the clerical assistants' grade. These thousand TCTs are brought in and after a year of the scheme it still appears, from the best information I have received from within the public service and the Civil Service, that there is a substitution of these people in that work to a large degree. They are not being trained in any respect but are supplementing permanent staff. Instead of appointing clerical assistants, the Department cutely have obtained cheap labour and now they are firing these people. Is that not correct?
I must refute that. No Civil Service post has been frozen by way of the embargo. The posts frozen relate to people who have left the service. The suggestion that the Department, or the Civil Service generally, is bringing in cheap labour is most unfair to those 1,000 school leavers who last year applied for participation in this work experience programme. They knew full well at the time they would obtain a contract for one year and to suggest that they are all being fired is not just unfair to the Government but unfair to the people who are finishing their year's contract in the normal way. There is no question that they are being fired.
Those that were on the programme have been let go. They are gone now. A new 1,000 are being taken on.
The school leavers are now applying.
The others are being let go.
The people who were taken on last year on a one-year contract are reaching the end of that contract.