Vol. 410 No. 7
15 Mr. Doyle asked the Minister for Labour if he will engage in discussions with the relevant trade union so as to bring to an end the blockage on the use of the social employment schemes by the Dublin local authorities; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Officials of my Department attended discussions which took place last year between the Department of the Environment and the trade unions concerned to try and resolve this problem.
The matter was subsequently discussed by the Central Review Committee of the Programme for National Recovery, without solution.
It is unlikely that a direct intervention by me would be helpful because of the nature of the problems involved. I would like to take this opportunity, however, to appeal to all concerned to try and resolve the problem in the interest of the number of unemployed persons who would welcome the opportunity to participate in the programme. I am also conscious of the contribution the scheme could make to improving the image of our capital, especially this year as it is the European City of Culture.
While accepting without question the rights of trade unions to protect the working rights of their members I would ask the Minister to ask his officials, before the discussions take place on this issue, to impress upon the trade unions in question that all redundancies that have taken place in the local authorities have taken place on a voluntary basis and if the social employment schemes were introduced it would not in any way affect the core work of these local authorities, that people would be employed in the environmental areas where there are numerous jobs available to young people. Let me further ask the Minister if the local authorities have indicated to him the number of people who would be able to be employed under such schemes if they were available.
I do not want to go into this at any great length because it has been controversial since 1984. My predecessor also worked very hard trying to resolve this problem. Last year after discussions here in the House we said that we should make a further effort and a great amount of effort was put in by the Congress of Trade Unions, by the monitoring committee, by the social employment scheme, by the Central Review Committee and the City Manager himself who directly led negotiations, along with his assistant managers and senior officials. I acknowledge that we did make the commitment that there would be no further redundancies. In spite of that and the involvement of my most senior officials in the Department working with my authority — and it was known that they had my authority and guarantees from me — we failed to convince the union concerned.
Will the Minister not agree that it is a national scandal that with over 80,000 unemployed people in Dublin, Dublin Corporation is blocked from employing a single person under the social employment scheme? Would the Minister agree that no one union should take it upon itself to prevent people obtaining employment in our capital city under the social employment scheme? Would the Minister agree that it is no longer acceptable that this problem should be ignored in the light of the many reasonable attempts made by the Minister, his predecessor and Congress to resolve it and that the time has come for the management of Dublin Corporation to state that they will now employ persons under the social employment scheme and that the matter be so dealt with?
I do not want there to be any rancour in regard to this. I would like to resolve it if I thought it was resolvable. The position paper we made available to the unions at the time stated that the Government wanted the resources to be made available for the SES to go to the most disadvantaged area, that by any objective standards the Dublin Corporation area was the most disadvantaged area, that the information I had at that stage last year was that eight wards had unemployment rates of over 50 per cent and that the comparative figures for Dublin County Council, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, were three, one, one and zero wards respectively and that it was preferable that local authorities rather than voluntary bodies would oversee the projects. That was my wish because, as Deputy Doyle said, we could get a greater number of people involved. I cannot answer the question Deputy Doyle asked but I would say that under the SES scheme in Dublin County Council there were 250 participants, small numbers compared with some of the rural county councils which, over the years, managed to employ 500 people under the scheme. Therefore the potential for Dublin could be of the order of a few thousand people if we could solve the problem.
Having regard to the numbers unemployed in Dublin which is in excess of 80,000 and the numbers on the social employment scheme, would the Minister agree that the two Dublin local authorities should currently have in the region of 3,500 people employed under the scheme? Could the Minister confirm that there is an absolute blockage on the use of it by Dublin Corporation and a semi-blockage on the use of it by Dublin County Council? Would the Minister agree that the trade union movement is damaged by IMPACT preventing the use of the scheme in Dublin? In so far as the trade union movement protests about increasing levels of unemployment it is contributing to those levels by disallowing the use of the scheme in Dublin. Finally, in the consultations that the Government are now to engage in under the Central Review Committee with the ICTU, will they bring to that committee the concerns of the Government and of this House about the prevention of the use of the social employment scheme in Dublin and insist that the blockage in that regard be lifted and, in the context of doing that, authorise the Dublin City and County management to seek to create additional new jobs in Dublin under the SES scheme?
There are a number of questions there. I want to be clear on one aspect, that is, to acknowledge that the Congress of Trade Unions themselves were very helpful in the negotiations. Congress in their co-ordinating role did as much as I could ask them to do last year in this matter. I will bring the other matters raised to the attention of the Department of the Environment who were involved in the discussions last year because any instructions to senior county managers would be a matter for them.
Would the Minister agree that if this problem is to be resolved it is only capable of being resolved by negotiation and agreement between the parties concerned? Will he acknowledge that one of the difficulties the trade unions concerned have is their fear — without comment on whether it continues to be justified — that people will begin to be employed under the SES for work that was traditionally done by full-time employees of Dublin Corporation and that their fears in that respect have to be assuaged if the scheme is to be successful in the two Dublin local authorities?
Negotiations have been going on for seven years. You cannot negotiate with someone who will not negotiate.
I acknowledge that that was the difficulty and it was with that in mind that we undertook last year not just to get involved through the monitoring committee but to involve the Congress of Trade Unions, the Department of the Environment, the most senior officials in the Department of Labour and the City Manager himself so that no party would be left out and that the assurances we were given would have the stamp of approval of everybody concerned. Because of my wish to have the matter negotiated I do not want to get into conflict here. I must have answered a similar question in the House 20 times as did my predecessors. The difficulty is that other local authorities have successfully done millions of pounds worth of very useful community and environmental work, to the disadvantage of Dublin, in being unable to reach the quota. I am nationally responsible, but I want to say there is a clear loss of beneficial work to the systems of this city because of the difficulties, whatever the reasons for them.
