andMr. T. Kitt asked the Minister for Finance the action, if any, he intends taking to resolve the current impasse with the Civil and Public Service Union and to prevent an escalation of the current dispute in the Civil Service.
Private Notice Questions. - Civil Service Group Industrial Action.
asked the Minister for Finance in view of the widespread disruption and inconvenience to the public caused by today's strike by the Civil and Public Servants Union, the action, if any, he intends to take to ensure that such disruption can be avoided in the future.
I shall answer the two Private Notice Questions about the Civil and Public Servants Union dispute together. In recent years the number of civil servants has increased by an average of 550 per year. Last June it came to the attention of the Government that in the preceding six months an even greater increase had occurred and, if the trend was not arrested, numbers could increase by over 1,500. During the latter half of last year the Government made a number of decisions designed to curtail an accelerating rate of increase in the numbers employed in the Civil Service and, indeed, in the wider public service. In the Civil Service those decisions involved restricting the creation of new posts to those made necessary by the EU Presidency later in the year, decentralisation and other identifiable but important "one-off" tasks. It was also decided that two in every three vacancies which would occur in 1996 would remain unfilled. This latter restriction is likely to affect only a very small number of posts out of a Civil Service of more than 29,000.
To ensure that the restrictions did not fall disproportionately on members of lower grades, such as those represented by the Civil and Public Services Union. I have directed departmental secretaries to operate them equitably. I should add that promotional outlets for the grades involved in today's action have improved in recent years as the numbers balance has shifted in favour of the Higher Executive Officer and Clerical Officer groupings. Proposals on a restructuring package designed to address further the perceived shortcomings in the career structures of the lower clerical grades have been put to the union. In the circumstances I have outlined, I suggest that the action being taken is out of proportion to the impact of this Government's policy on the staff involved. Discussions on the restrictions and the reasons underlying them have already taken place with the Civil Service unions at general council, under the conciliation and arbitration scheme. Further such discussions are scheduled for the next meeting of the council which is to take place next week. I have always felt that matters of concern to Civil Service unions should be discussed at that forum and I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to the Civil and Public Servants Union members to refrain from any further industrial action.
Does the Minister not agree that it is difficult to ask the Civil and Public Servants' Union to abide by the Government's decision given that a newspaper article today stated that Democratic Left Ministers and Ministers of State have taken on 21 additional advisers at a cost of over £1,500 per day? Is it not a bit much to ask the union which looks after the lowest grade of civil servants who receive the lowest rates of pay to abide by the Government's embargo which was announced in breach of the conditions of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, particularly when his colleagues in Democratic Left have taken on an additional 21 staff advisers at a cost of over £400,000 to the State?
I have not read the article to which the Deputy refers so I cannot answer his question.
It was in The Cork Examiner, a newspaper which the Minister knows well. I will speak to Mr. Crosbie when I meet him in Cork and tell him that his good friend is not reading his newspaper daily.
I will read The Cork Examiner before the sun goes down, but I cannot say anything more about this until I do so.
Will the Minister agree that one of the problems he faces is that in the past four years public service pay has increased by £1.3 billion or 36 per cent compared with total inflation in that period of 10 per cent? Will the Minister agree that another problem he faces is that the pay of a departmental secretary increased by 42 per cent since 1990 compared with a lower increase for clerical assistants of 19 per cent which compares with an 18 per cent increase in the average industrial wage?
Is it not the problem that there has been a huge imbalance in the growth in public sector pay and that those on the lowest rung of the ladder are not getting the same proportionate increase as those on the highest rung? Is it not the problem with this stop-go embargo driven public employment policy that this and previous Governments have failed to stand up to the demands of some people for an ever increasing public sector pay bill and at the same time have failed to conclude reasonable deals with the unions which concentrate on take home pay, about which most people in the public sector, particularly those at the bottom of the ladder, are most concerned?
There were many issues mentioned in the Deputy's speech——
There was a question mark at the end of it.
——with some of which I would agree. The main point is that when the Government saw the rate of growth in public service numbers, it felt it had a duty to curtail it in some respects. That is the issue and the only answer I can give. The Deputy raised many other issues but they are extraneous to this question.
The growth in numbers in the public service was such that the Government did not feel it could sustain that growth in the context of controlling public expenditure. It put a brake on the growth; that is prudent and sensible action for any Government to take.
Will the Minister of State agree that the Government chose to impose its bludgeon-like policy on the lowest paid sector? When the Government did not meet its financial targets, it chose to take it out on the lowest grades in the Civil Service. That is what is behind this issue. Does the Minister of State feel it sits uneasily with the Taoiseach's commitment to reform of the public service, to openness and to better accessibility for consumers to public services, that he and the Government by this action have demoralised the lowest grades within the Civil Service and the public service?
In my original answer I made the point that the Government is anxious and is taking steps to ensure that what the Deputy has just described will not occur. We are looking carefully at the impact of this curtailment of growth——
How will that work in small public service Departments which will be badly affected by this measure?
My information is that Department Secretaries have been asked to look at how this impacts in the Departments to avoid what the Deputy has mentioned. It is obviously more of a problem in a small Department than in a large one. However, the instruction has been given that care should be taken that it does not impact on the lower paid. That is certainly the view of the Minister and the Department of Finance.
Will the Minister of State agree that a blanket embargo is a blunt instrument? It would be more appropriate to have a more streamlined, localised approach at departmental level where one could assess the human resources needed. I am referring to members of clerical staff, 400 of them in Garda stations so that gardaí can be released to go on the beat, people in tax offices looking after headage payments for farmers and people who look after the unemployed. The staff in the service areas are in the front line and we should consider a more localised, departmental approach.
Can the Minister of State confirm that this issue is unrelated to the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, in that the embargo is not a pay issue? Does the Minister of State appreciate that 70 per cent of these workers are female, that the traditional route out of low paid work is by promotion and that, by using this blunt embargo, the Government is cutting off this option for thousands of women in Government Departments and public offices?
Successive Governments, including Governments composed of the Deputy's party either alone or with other parties, have found that the blunt instrument also happens to be——
We moved away from that since 1978.
I am aware of that. However, the most effective way of containing the growth in numbers is through this type of measure. While the sophisticated method the Deputy refers to sounds attractive, the reality is that it has not proved to be as effective. When the Government saw the rate of growth accelerating so quickly — and Opposition Members were quite critical about it — the measure was taken. That was prudent and sensible and put a brake on the problem. It was done with an intended sensitivity which will have——
I am glad the Minister of State included the word "intended"; it did not work out.
One does not always achieve 100 per cent performance. However, the intent of the Government is to ensure that it is done with reasonable sensitivity so as not to impact on the lower paid. It is not true to say that if one wants to effectively slow down the growth of the public service there is a better way than this. There might be a more esoteric and pleasant way to do it, as the Deputy has said, but even the Deputy's party in Government dealt with it effectively in earlier years in a similar manner to this Government.
We did it through the administrative budgets.
What about the Programme for Competitiveness and Work? Can the Minister of State confirm that 70 per cent of the workers are women?
I will have to check that. I cannot confirm the Deputy's percentages.
Can the Minister of State confirm that this is not related to the Programme for Competitiveness and Work?
It is not related to the Programme for Competitiveness and Work. I will check the percentages and refer back to the Deputy.
What effect does the Minister of State expect this to have on future negotiations for a national wage agreement, considering that the Government has broken the current wage agreement within the Programme for Competitiveness and Work in that it imposed this embargo without consultation? The Minister of State, being a practical man with business experience, will surely agree this embargo will yield little or no savings in Government expenditure. This evening staff who are currently picketing on the streets will be back doing overtime in the relevant Departments. Given that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry has set the headline by paying overtime before it is even worked, the result of this embargo will be that overtime will become part of the system and there will be no overall saving to the State. Anybody who knows about the workings of Government Departments realises that people working at these levels will have to do overtime. There will be no net saving to the public purse. This is not the way to achieve savings in public sector pay.
This Government is very conscious of the importance of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, has given strong commitment to its implementation and is concerned about the replacement programme——
Managers.
——when it runs out, as any Government should be. The estimated savings are about £2 million. The overtime issue is a matter for the management in each Department. It does not follow that because somebody withdraws service for an afternoon he automatically must make it up on overtime. It is possible to make up the time during normal working time and good management would try to ensure that.
That will happen this evening and the Minister of State can take my word for it. Overtime will be done and there will be no savings.
The Government regrets that this action is taking place and believes it is somewhat disproportionate to the issues involved. Clearly, management in each Department will try to ensure that it contains its costs and does not automatically involve itself in overtime because of a withdrawal of labour. There might be some exceptions to that but, by and large, that is what I expect managers will try to achieve.
Is Democratic Left happy?
Will the Minister address the point I made earlier that the real issue is the total size of the public sector wages bill and the failure of the Government to conclude agreements with the public sector unions which concentrate on the value of take home pay?
The real issue is that the Government, confronted with such a problem had to take a draconian and arbitrary measure to stop it. Will the Minister agree that the decision to enforce a crude embargo of the kind decided on bears about as much relationship to good Government and administration as stopping a car at traffic lights by sticking the gears into reverse?
The Deputy is right to say the public service pay bill is a large problem for every Government and always will be but this was not a panic measure. When the Government saw the rate of increase in the numbers, it took a sensible and prudent course to contain them. It is not all that crude an instrument — it is effective and that has been demonstrated in the past. Deputy McDowell would be one of the first to criticise the Government if it had not taken action of this kind. He is correct to allude to the difficulties facing all Governments concerning the total cost of the public service — it is a large amount of money in relation to the total cost of Government.
All Governments have worked assiduously since the beginning of the 1990s on reducing the levels of taxation and all have reduced them somewhat, perhaps not quickly enough. We all move in that direction, that is not the province of the Deputy's party only.
It is not the interest of the Minister's partners in Government.
This is not a matter of public probity but of panic. The Minister for Finance made the announcement a week prior to the budget, when leaks were proliferating. It was a macho measure. He decided to cut public service numbers by having an embargo and ensuring there were no promotions. This was to balance the view, which continues to grow, that the smallest of the coalition parties has a disproportionate weight in the current Government's actions, programmes and objectives. It was used for a political pursuit, to cast a patina of rigid probity across the preparations for the 1996 budget. I am not being fanciful — I remember the headlines on the day it was leaked and the joy with which it was greeted by the far right economists and commentators. In that I do not include my colleague.
His brother?
I saw him out of the corner of my eye.
The Deputy saw my eyebrows rising.
Fianna Fáil's view is that this measure was fuelled by the need or desire for political expediency, to show the macho probity colours. The Department and the Government chose to make the weakest sector of the Civil Service and the public service the scapegoat for its profligate plans.
That was so eloquently put it is hard to respond. The Deputy referred to differences between Government parties. There are three parties in Government——
We know.
—there are only two on the other side of the House and quite a gulf has opened between them on this issue.
No, we are friendly.
I do not think the Minister for Finance used the macho language referred to by Deputy O'Rourke. I reiterate that this was a fairly minimalist, sensible approach when public service numbers were escalating. The cost of the public service pay bill is more affected by numbers than any other single factor — it has a much greater effect than wage levels. If the numbers cannot be contained, the bill will escalate out of control, ultimately. I think it was a responsible thing for the Government to do.
I am happy for the teachers but how does the Minister equate that with what the Government has done to the lower grades in the Civil Service?
The Deputy ought not to speak from a seated position.
The Deputy has made the assumption which I tried to answer in my original reply, that this is impacting on the lower pay grades in the public sector. That is not the case and the message has gone out loud and clear that it should not be the case. That is the only answer I can give her.
To underline the point I made earlier, I will give the example of the Garda Síochána. The Minister for Justice says she wants to release gardaí to put them on the beat and use more clerical officers but this blunt instrument flies in the face of that policy. I suggested that the Minister should take a more appropriate approach by dealing with this locally at departmental level and I ask him to consider that. Finally, rather than having a meeting of the general council, the Minister of State or the Minister for Finance should meet the union involved. Media reports state that the Department of Finance has refused to meet the union and given that 10,000 workers are involved, I cannot understand why their representatives cannot meet officials of the Department.
The last public service strike was ten years ago, when the present arrangements were in place also.
Those Ministers may not be able to meet the union — they will have to ask permission of Democratic Left.
This is not a 100 per cent embargo — jobs are being filled selectively by the Government, some in the areas spoken about by Deputy Kitt. It is not a blanket ban with no control, there will be a pool and allocations under strict criteria. I do not think it would be appropriate for the Minister for Finance to be involved in meetings while conciliation and arbitration facilities exist and are still being used by both sides.
The Minister does not rule it out?
With Democratic Left permission.