Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Parlon)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to introduce the Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003. This is a key public sector reform measure. The public service has a major role to play in the economic and social life of the country. A modern and flexible recruitment system for the public service is essential in supporting the wider modernisation programme set out in the strategic management initiative and in Sustaining Progress. The human resource management working group, a cross-departmental working group established under the strategic management initiative, recommended to the Government that the structures governing the recruitment of civil servants should be reformed. In particular, it was decided that there should be an option for public service bodies to recruit directly as well as through the Civil Service Commissioners. New approaches to the management of public service organisations can only be effective where the recruitment system works in support of those changes. It is not enough to have the right management systems in place, we must also make certain that the best people are selected in a timely manner and are working where their skills and experience can be of most benefit.

The measures in the Bill introduce an important new element of flexibility into the recruitment system. As a result of the changes being introduced, public sector organisations will be able to recruit the staff they need when and where they are needed. The measures will also ensure that the best people are recruited by requiring that best human resource and recruitment practice will be observed at all times. The institutional arrangements contained in the Bill are specifically designed to make sure that recruitment procedures are in line with best practice and will remain so as best practice evolves.

I draw the attention of the House to the support this Bill offers for the decentralisation process announced by the Minister for Finance in the 2004 budget. In the near future, the headquarters and sub-offices of Civil Service Departments and other agencies will be decentralised to locations outside Dublin. It is noteworthy that this Bill is being presented to Dáil Éireann at this time. The changes being introduced will be vital in ensuring that decentralisation works successfully. One of the main aims of the reforms is to allow public sector bodies to tailor recruitment to their own needs, a factor which will be particularly important during the decentralisation process and in supporting the work of those bodies when they are established in their new locations.

The measures in this Bill are part of the strategic approach to management of human resources in the Civil Service and in the other public service organisations to which it will apply. The Bill is not an isolated initiative. It is a significant element of the programme of public service modernisation which was agreed with the public service unions in Sustaining Progress. I am happy to report to the House that the public service unions have been fully consulted about these measures and they agreed to the introduction of the Bill in Sustaining Progress. The changes being introduced are another sign that the benchmarking agreement implemented in Sustaining Progress has produced real, practical changes in the way the public service operates. I ask the House to consider and welcome the Bill in that light.

The Civil Service and Local Appointments Commissions and their staff have performed a very important role over the years. The efficiency and probity with which the commissioners have carried out their work has been a major factor in creating a civil and public service which has allowed the State to develop and prosper. There have been many examples abroad of public confidence in the institutions of Government being undermined in part because of a failure to maintain the probity of the public appointments system. It is to the credit of the commission that this did not happen in Ireland and, moreover, that there has never been even the slightest possibility of it happening. This is a major achievement. Nevertheless, we must accept that all institutions need to adapt and change to take account of the new challenges facing them. We know that the commission's role was largely established at a time when the public service was smaller and was expected to deal with a much narrower range of functions.

As Irish society has changed, the role and function of the civil and public service has also changed. There are many more organisations in the public sector carrying out a wider range of far more complex tasks. This means we must change the way we manage our human resources in the Civil Service. It means giving Secretaries General and Departments the ability to manage their Departments and offices more effectively.

In recent years it has become clear that the public appointments system is not flexible enough to meet modern labour market conditions. On occasion, the Civil Service has found it difficult to recruit the staff it needed because of labour market pressures when the centralised recruitment system could not respond quickly enough to the recruitment needs of complex organisations which were responding to the demands generated by economic expansion. The Government could not allow these bottlenecks to persist. No organisation can allow itself to be put in the position of being unable to recruit the staff it needs, when they are needed, to carry out its work. The reforms proposed in this Bill are designed to modernise the recruitment system so that it can meet the service's requirements and at the same time ensure it will be flexible enough to deal with any future changes in the labour market.

Deputies will agree that there is a major public good in ensuring the fairness and probity of all aspects of recruitment to the public service. I know from personal experience and from my experience as a public representative that it is widely accepted that when anyone applies for a post in the civil or public service, his application will be treated in a fair and impartial manner. I have never heard it said that a public appointment handled by the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commissions has been in any way improperly influenced. People have confidence that following interviews or examinations, the best people are appointed to jobs. In any reform of the recruitment system it is essential that the public trust established by the commissioners over the years is maintained. The Government is determined to make certain that this public confidence in the probity of the system will not be undermined. I ask Deputies to bear in mind that many of, if not all, the new institutional arrangements in the Bill have been designed to ensure that this key public value of probity is preserved.

At present, recruitment to the Civil Service and the Garda Síochána is carried out by the Civil Service Commission, while recruitment to senior posts in local authorities and health boards is carried out by the Local Appointments Commission. The Bill will repeal the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956 and amend the legislation dealing with the Local Appointments Commission. The Bill proposes to create two new bodies, the Commission for Public Service Appointments and the Public Appointments Service. The Commission for Public Service Appointments will become the sole regulator for public service recruitment. It will set standards for recruitment to the Civil Service and public service and will monitor compliance with those standards.

In accordance with the policy of devolution of authority, public service bodies regulated by the commission will be allowed to undertake their own recruitment. This is a departure from the present system applying to the Civil Service and the Garda Síochána, both of which are now obliged to recruit though the Civil Service Commission. It will be a matter for the Garda Commissioner and the Secretary General of each Department to decide whether to avail of the opportunity to apply for a licence to recruit. If they decide to apply for a licence they will be able to recruit directly from the labour market without the requirement to use the centralised recruitment agency as an intermediary while following the standards laid down by the commission. However, if they decide to continue to use the service of a centralised agency, that option will continue to be available.

The commission for public service appointments will license public service bodies to recruit, according to clear codes of practice, on their own behalf or with the assistance of private sector recruitment agencies specifically approved by the commission. The commission will have the authority to alter or revoke a licence or to issue directions to a licence holder. These arrangements are designed to maintain the probity of the recruitment process.

The Bill also provides for the establishment of the public appointments service as the centralised recruitment body for the public service. The professionalism and expertise in public service recruitment that has been developed within the Office of the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commissioners will now reside within the public appointments service. This body will continue to play a critical and vital role in the future of public sector recruitment and in future development of human resources management across the public sector.

The Bill is arranged in eight Parts and contains two Schedules. Part 1 provides for the dissolution of the Civil Service Commissioners and the Local Appointments Commissioners. It also allows the Minister for Finance to appoint a day on which the commission for public service appointments and the public appointments service will come into being and determines which public service appointments are covered by the legislation.

The Department of Finance and the Civil Service Commission are meeting to plan and implement the establishment of the commission for public service appointments and the public appointments service. The new bodies will share the financial and staffing resources which are allocated to the Civil Service Commission. A director will be appointed to head the office of the commission. An adequate number of staff of the Civil Service Commission will be seconded to the commission for public service appointments to set that body on a firm foundation, although the commission may opt to appoint its own staff in the long term. The remainder of the staff of the Civil Service Commission will be transferred to the public appointments service. It is intended that arrangements will be in place to allow the Minister for Finance to establish the new bodies by early summer 2004.

On establishment day, appointments to the Garda Síochána, to most positions in the Civil Service, and to certain managerial, professional and technical posts in local authorities, health boards and vocational education committees will be covered. Section 6 permits the Minister for Finance to make orders extending the application of the Bill beyond these appointments. However, certain appointments are excluded from the scope of the legislation and the Minister cannot make an order bringing them within the remit of the Bill. These include appointments made by the Government or the President and appointments to posts established under the Constitution. A number of other appointments are excluded, but the Minister may make orders bringing them within the remit. It is the Minister's intention to ensure that, in time, the overwhelming majority of public service posts will be subject to the system of regulation established by the Bill.

There have been comments that the Government is using the Bill to take power to appoint its own advisers to pensionable posts in the Civil Service. The Minister for Finance said this week:

The Government is not taking any power to appoint its advisers to pensionable Civil Service posts. There is nothing unusual in what the legislation intends, and there will continue to be a bar on appointments of the kind mentioned.

The Minister further explained that section 19(5) of the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995 states that appointments of special advisers to established permanent and pensionable posts in the Civil Service cannot be made using section 13 of the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956. I am sure that the House will recognise that, as the new Bill repeals the entire 1956 Act, to reform the recruitment system, it is necessary to make new provisions to secure the continuing prohibition on the appointment of special advisers to permanent posts.

Ms Burton

There are no new provisions. There is a code of practice but no new provisions.

An Ceann Comhairle

Allow the Minister of State to continue without interruption.

Mr. Parlon

I have already outlined the main provisions of the commission for public service appointments and these are set out in Part 2. Between three and nine persons may be appointed as commissioners. The Ceann Comhairle, the Secretary General to the Government and the Secretary General with responsibility for public service management and development in the Department of Finance will be commissioners, ex-officio. Other commissioners, who will be appointed by the Government, will serve for a renewable period of up to five years.

The commission will establish standards of probity, merit, equity and fairness to govern the recruitment and selection of appointees and will publish them as codes of practice. It will grant recruitment licences and can also issue instructions to licence holders and revoke licences, where appropriate. The commission will report to the Oireachtas every year. The commission will prepare and publish codes of practice which will set out the principles to be observed by licence holders in recruitment to the public service. Each code will include instructions on probity and fairness, the need to ensure that candidates are selected on the basis of merit, the protection of the public interest, the implementation of best practice and the general procedures to be adopted to deal with grievances and complaints brought forward by candidates. The commission may consolidate, revoke or amend a code as it sees fit.

Except in the case of the public appointments service, which will hold a recruitment licence on the establishment day, recruitment licences will be granted for the conduct of recruitment processes only where codes of practice for the posts concerned have been published. This will ensure that all recruitment processes are governed by codes of practice approved by the commission. Candidates will be selected for appointment in the order of merit as determined by the recruitment process. As an additional safeguard, there is a provision in this Part that requires persons who have knowledge that there has been an attempt to influence a recruitment process to inform the commission. While this Part gives the commission responsibility for setting and safeguarding standards of probity in recruitment, it also provides them with the powers necessary to enforce standards.

The commission may investigate the exercise of recruitment functions by any licence holder or recruitment agency. Licence holders, recruitment agencies and any other person who may have information which is materially relevant to the exercise of functions under the Bill must co-operate with an investigation. It will be an offence to obstruct an investigation and a person found guilty of such an offence will be liable to summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €3,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both.

Taken together, these responsibilities and powers will ensure that the high standards of probity which have been the hallmark of the Civil Service Commissioners and the Local Appointments Commissioners will also characterise recruitment under a licence issued by the commission for public service appointments. Probity is essential as it is not the Government's intention to introduce flexibility at the cost of lowering of standards and undermining public confidence. The Government is satisfied that the Bill strengthens and protects the high standards that have been established in this area.

The number of recruitment agencies has increased greatly. These agencies operate to a high standard and have a great deal to offer public sector organisations in carrying out recruitment. The Government wants to give public sector bodies the opportunity to draw on this expertise in identifying and selecting the best people for a specific job. Accordingly, provision is being made in the Bill for licence holders to receive assistance from these professional agencies. To maintain the probity of the recruitment system, responsibility for recruitment will remain with the public service licence holder. While a licence holder will be able to enlist the assistance of approved recruitment agencies, it will remain the licence holder's duty to ensure that the recruitment agency complies with the conditions of the recruitment licence issued by the commission.

Part 3 deals with the public appointments service. This will be independent in the exercise of its functions, which will include acting as the centralised recruitment, assessment and selection body for the Civil Service and public service bodies where it is requested to do so; ensuring that the Commission's codes of practice are followed in the recruitment process; undertaking other selection competitions, including promotion competitions and competitions to posts in organisations outside the Civil Service, where requested by the relevant Minister; and providing expert services on recruitment, assessment and selection matters.

The board of the public appointments service will consist of a chairperson, its chief executive and seven ordinary members. The board's functions will include considering and approving plans and strategic objectives put forward by the chief executive, monitoring the public appointments service in the exercise of its functions, and ensuring that appropriate review procedures are put in place for recruitment and promotion procedures. Throughout the Bill, the Government is determined to uphold the probity of the system. It is a requirement that the board members must not participate in political activity. This is essential to ensure that there will be no suspicion of interference in the work of the public appointments service.

Part 4 sets out the provisions relating to recruitment licences. The commission will consider applications for recruitment licences from the chief executive of any public service body within the remit of the commission. Recruitment licences may be granted for specific positions. Each licence will also include the terms and conditions upon which it is held. Licence holders may delegate all or part of the task of recruitment to the public appointments service. In those circumstances, the chief executive of the public appointments service rather than the licence holder will be responsible for adherence to the terms of the licence.

The commission may issue instructions and advice to licence holders in situations where it forms the view that an aspect of the recruitment process has been or is likely to be compromised. The commission may amend a licence and may revoke a licence if necessary. Where it is deemed necessary to revoke a licence and a recruitment process is already in train, the commission will have the power to make transitional arrangements.

Part 5 sets out the obligations applying to candidates in respect of recruitment and selection procedures. Candidates taking part in competitions within the civil and public service also have important obligations which the Government wants to set down in statute.

This part of the Bill prohibits, in any recruitment, selection or promotion competition within the public service, the provision of false information, canvassing or bribery, personation and interference with the competition in any way. A person engaging in any of these activities is guilty of an offence. Where a person has been found guilty of the offence, and was or is a candidate at a competition, he or she will be disqualified as a candidate. If he or she has been appointed, he or she will forfeit that appointment.

Part 6 deals with selection for promotion and provides that the Minister for Finance, following consultation with any relevant Ministers, may request the PAS to hold promotion competitions for civil servants or other public servants.

Part 7 sets out the powers and responsibilities of the Minister for Finance and other Ministers regarding recruitment and selection. Part 8 contains technical provisions dealing with transitional arrangements, repeals of legislation and consequential amendments of legislation.

Anything commenced but not completed before the establishment day by the Civil Service commissioners and the local appointments commissioners may be carried on and completed after that day by the PAS, if it relates to the conduct of a competition, or by the commission in all other cases.

Schedule 1 lists a number of scheduled occupations. Recruitment to these occupations is outside the remit of the Bill, although the Minister may make an order bringing them within its remit at some future point. Schedule 2 sets out consequential repeals, revocations and amendments to Acts and statutory instruments.

As I said at the outset, this Bill introduces important reforms in a key area of the civil and public service. The way recruitment is managed in any organisation can affect every aspect of that organisation's work. It can affect the way its customers see it and it will affect the way in which its employees work. The whole culture of the organisation can be shaped positively if the recruitment process is handled properly.

I am sure the House will agree that this is particularly relevant to public sector organisations. The civil and public service is there both to advise the Government and to implement its policies on behalf of the community. Public sector recruitment must continue to be open and fair. All members of the community who apply for a post in the public service must believe that their applications will be treated impartially. If this were ever to change, the effect on our public service would be very serious. It would alter the way our public and political institutions operate and change the nature of Irish public life for the worse. The Government is determined to reform the recruitment system, but it will not undermine the trust and confidence which the public has in public service recruitment.

At the same time, the civil and public service must be in a position to recruit the staff it needs quickly and efficiently. In particular, the service needs to be able to compete with the private sector to select its staff from among the best available people. Without the ability to act in this way, the quality of service available to the public will suffer.

The Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill meets these requirements. The measures will provide the public service with the recruitment mechanisms it needs in a changing, modern economy while maintaining the fairness and probity of the public service recruitment system. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. R. Bruton

It was interesting that the Minister introduced this measure as an important support to the decision the Government has made to introduce decentralisation. I want to make some comments on that aspect at the outset.

This Government has developed a cock-sure confidence in its own invincibility in recent times and we saw the highest watermark of that fact just before the election when the Taoiseach promised that hospital waiting lists would be ended within two years. That did not and will not happen, and the Ceann Comhairle is better placed than most to know that. People might ask if that was a lie. I do not believe so but it does tell us something about the extent to which the Government has become detached from reality in its decision making process and the recommendations it makes for policy change.

Although the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, had no hand, act or part in it he appears to be very enthusiastic about this decision to transfer one third of the centralised Civil Service or major Government controlled executive agencies to 53 locations throughout the country. How would we expect a decision like that to be taken in a modern democracy that valued transparency and accountability? Would we not have expected to see a strategic policy statement indicating the strength and weaknesses of this change, the possible threats it might pose to the delivery of quality services and the opportunities it offered in terms of regional strategy? Would we not have expected to see some sort of coherent policy statement, founded on proper principles, which would have evaluated the risks and opportunities, followed by a coherent policy based on those evaluations? However, that is not what we saw.

The Deputy asked me a direct question.

An Ceann Comhairle

Allow Deputy Bruton to continue without interruption.

Mr. R. Bruton

These are not frivolous issues. Recently the Comptroller and Auditor General drew our attention to the role of an accounting officer, which is not the same as that of a Secretary General, as the Ceann Comhairle is aware. An accounting officer has a separate role. One aspect of that role is to evaluate the risk to his or her organisation of the major changes envisaged. Where an accounting officer evaluates such change and finds that the impact of it on his or her organisation is serious and may have damaging effects, he or she is obliged to make recommendations to the Minister concerned. If the Minister does not act on those, the accounting officer is obliged to report that to the Comptroller and Auditor General. These are not light matters but measures put in place by the Oireachtas to try to protect the people from poor decision making by the Government of the day. They are to ensure that the accounting officer, who has a separate role of accountability to this House through the Comptroller and Auditor General, would not have his or her role in this regard trampled upon by the Minister concerned or the Government seeking to achieve certain ends without the risk assessment that must accompany them. I would like to hear from the Minister of State and from accounting officers how they have evaluated the impact of the implementation of decentralisation by way of this Bill on their operations.

I foresee chaos and vastly experienced teams being dismantled to try to reassemble them in new locations. I foresee officials with vast experience, say in fisheries, suddenly finding themselves dealing with prisons and officials with vast experience in education dealing with environmental protection. What will fall through the crevices? Will we find that very costly errors will be made, as happened in the past? The Ceann Comhairle will remember in the case of the EU Presidency when some 50 posts were temporarily moved in the Department of Justice, an issue regarding the resignation of a judge was mishandled because people who had been moved did not know exactly what needed to be done. How much greater will such errors be when 30,000 such movements are taking place, which is the likely impact of this measure? These are not frivolous issues that are being raised by public servants who have expressed concern. They are issues that need to be addressed in some way by this House. If the Minister of State does not accept that we can examine some of these issues by way of this Bill, how will we get accountability from the Government for decisions that could have a dramatic impact on the way public service is delivered and managed?

Part of this Bill has come from the strategic management process and the document Delivering Better Government. The background to the Bill was originally the document Delivering Better Government. It was significant that when the high level group of public servants considered the issue of public service reform they rejected the Minister of State's proposals. It was surprising he did not advert to that fact. They said that we should not go down the route the Government proposes in respect of public service recruitment but that we should prioritise other issues. Such issues include the need for much more rapid delegation of responsibility down the line to line managers, much more performance oriented evaluation, reward related to performance within the public service and much better financial management systems put in place. It is not an accident that the review of the strategic management process recently completed for the Taoiseach indicates that progress on many of these issues has been extremely slow. Yet, the Government has not introduced proposals to accelerate these vital areas of reform in public service, but one proposal was rejected by what was in the document, Delivering Better Government, on the basis that the priority lay elsewhere. Is the Minister of State deciding to go for the softer option, the thing that is easy to do?

It is easy to produce a Bill and have it passed by the House, but it is much more difficult to bring in serious public service reform. Are we seeing a lazy approach to the public service reform agenda, with the Minister of State following the line of least resistance in respect of recruitment without thinking through and delivering the other changes? Many would say that one of the tragedies decentralisation will impose on public service reform is that so much energy will be put into shifting bodies and offices around the country that the appetite, ability and capacity of the public service to address issues such as performance management, the putting in place of proper financial management systems and the introduction of the modern human resource approaches that are needed, will be dissipated in chasing and organising the replacement—

Mr. Parlon

The Deputy underestimates them.

Mr. R. Bruton

I can yield to the Minister of State if he wishes to make a point. He keeps interrupting but will not accept the offer.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister of State will have an opportunity to speak at the conclusion of the debate.

Mr. R. Bruton

I am willing to give him the opportunity to speak if he wishes because I would like a serious dialogue on these issues.

The serious public service reform agenda, identified in the document Delivering Better Government, has, according to the document from PA Consulting, not delivered much of what was hoped for. It has made progress but such progress has been slow in many important areas. In the most vital areas of performance, reward systems and delegating authority down the line to manage resources according to objectives, much of what was needed has not happened. One of the victims of the decentralisation decision will be the lack of progress in these areas. I would like the Minister of State to deal with that point.

Another issue that arises out of the Bill is cross-cutting policy. One of the most serious flaws in the way we have managed public service over the years is that Departments have operated in a pipe-like fashion, in that they do well within their own territory, but they have found it difficult to cope with cross-cutting issues such as dealing with children who present behavioural difficulties, an issue which crosses from health to education to the Garda Síochána to numerous different agencies. Two measures raise question marks over this area. Recruitment will be devolved to the managers in these rigidly defined line systems and there will be decentralisation, which creates a geographical separation.

Two decisions by the Government raise question marks over to the capacity of Departments to create integrated responses to problems, the resolution of which require the addressing of multiple factors. As the Minister of State rightly said, we are facing increasing complexity in the kinds of problems with which the Government has to deal and increasingly they require cross-cutting responses from a range of Departments. However, the Government proposes two measures, one of which — decentralisation — will result in officials being further away from one another. There will also be separate recruitment, which will mean that staff recruited will not come from shared pools of experience. Rather, a manager will recruit to fill positions for specific roles that he or she has defined within his or her narrow range of competence. There are issues to be addressed in that area. I want to tease out with the Minister of State how this will work in delivering coherent responses to some of the difficult challenges we face. This is a matter of considerable concern.

The Bill is not necessarily a bad thing. It is enabling legislation which introduces desirable flexibilities if correctly used in appropriate circumstances. The Minister of State dealt at considerable length with the need for probity in recruitment, which will no doubt be secured. It was one of the achievements of our Government to introduce the notion that there would be no jobbery in the public service and that absence of jobbery has been a lasting, valuable aspect of the public service. This will be preserved in the new environment but there are other issues to be addressed in moving from what the literature calls "career-based public services" to "position-based public services" — we have had a career-based public service and the Minister is proposing a move towards a more position-based service. One would not just have early entry points, with people creating a career as they moved between Departments within a centralised career structure.

The Minister is right in saying we need to think of changes to ensure we do not put round pegs in square holes, but we must also ensure the powers in the legislation are used productively. We do not want to see the public service peopled with technocrats who are good at making widgets. When widgets are no longer needed and we need to do something else, it would be very hard to move those people from the very specific tasks for which they were recruited. They would be permanent, pensionable workers who did not come through with generalist skills and the capacity to move from place to place. There are significant public policy issues here separate from the question of whether public servant X can deliver objective Y within the next two years. No doubt the Bill allows him or her to do so, but government is a job that goes on forever. We have to anticipate whether the Bill's powers will be used in inappropriate circumstances to create rigidity, narrow skills and an inability to cope with change. That should be teased out and the Minister should show how he will ensure the Bill does not result in that kind of approach.

That is why Delivering Better Government took the opposite view to what is being proposed, stating that it is important to retain the career structure but suggesting building flexibilities within that. It did not go for the changes which are now proposed. I know there were inflexibilities in the operation of the Civil Service Commission, such as the long delays in recruitment referred to by the Minister. People could have six months to decide whether they wanted to accept a job while an agency continued with no one in place. Could these problems have been overcome by policy changes within the existing structure or is it right to move to this new structure? Have those issues been resolved in the new structure? Many of these issues appear to be procedural matters such as bureaucratic drag, bad practice and inertia rather than legislative failure, which is the resolution on offer here. I see what the Minister is driving at but I want to be convinced that checks and balances are built into this Bill and that it will be supervised properly.

I would have been much happier with this proposal if we had seen a strong approach to delegating functions from the public service or if we saw managers trying to achieve objectives while being spancelled by something wrong with the recruitment practices. No such evidence has emerged. It is significant that the Bill, while it addresses entry and recruitment, is very ambivalent on promotion. If one is trying to create human resource managers who can respond flexibly to complex challenges, as the Minister described the purpose of the Bill, it is not just the recruitment of clerical officers or executive officers which matters. There is also the issue of promoting people and putting those with experience into positions of responsibility. That is what makes an organisation dynamic and capable of delivering. We need open competition in that area but the Bill is remarkably silent on this, perhaps leaving it to some other day when orders may be introduced to deal with the issue.

We will not see transparency and openness introduced in many of the promotion competitions which are vital in putting experienced, skilled and focused people into positions. I would be more convinced if the Bill addressed not just early recruitment but promotion and a human resource management strategy which would deliver quality governance in complex areas. The Bill was not put in that context by the Minister of State in his speech, which gave us the nuts and bolts of the rolling out of the measure. That is not good enough because these decisions will be in place for a long time and will colour the way the public service operates for many years.

The issue of promotion is particularly important. I was surprised that only one third of posts for promotion are open to anyone in the public service. By and large posts for promotion are confined, for example, with only those in the Department of Education and Science going for promotion posts in that Department. Having just one third of posts open for competition seems a bizarre restriction on the talent of public servants. This has probably grown out of historic negotiations, and one of the changes suggested under Sustaining Progress is to expand that figure from one third to 50%. Why 50%? Why have any such restriction?

I was amazed to read of a restriction if one proposes to recruit from outside for positions at higher executive officer level and upwards. One can only recruit from outside to the extent that people have been poached from public service positions to the private sector. One cannot envisage a person coming from the private sector into the public sector at HEO level or upwards unless someone has been poached by the private sector for such a position in the previous year. What kind of sense does that make? The Bill supposedly addresses recruitment and promotion but there is no mention of these bizarre restrictions on a modern public service. It is difficult to understand why such restrictions should remain in place and the thought process behind them should be explained. We should have a proper human resource management strategy which states that we need to change those restrictions. I was surprised that we had to negotiate and make benchmarking payments to find that we would use a competitive merit-based system for promotion. Imagine having to negotiate to use such a system.

We have serious problems in human resources, which the Government has ducked. It has brought in this easy measure to open up initial recruitment into the public service, but teeming beneath are restrictions which prevent the many talented people in our public service from getting to positions where they can have the greatest impact. Combining decentralisation with these powers creates the worry that this inward thinking, the notion that one does not look outside one's Department for recruitment, will be reinforced. If a Secretary General has recruited for a position in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism in Killarney, and posts have traditionally been filled internally, it will be much more difficult to believe the Secretary General will see the merit of looking to a talented person in the Department of Education and Science. Decentralisation runs the risk of reinforcing the anomalies that exist rather than flushing them out. I would like to see these being flushed out before moving on to a recruitment Bill.

The way in which the Government handled benchmarking was a tragedy. While the benchmarking commission called for €1.3 billion to be paid in benchmarking arrangements, it argued that approximately €900 million of this should be conditional on an agenda to drive public service reform. The Government sat on its hands and did not put a reform agenda on the table. It did not drive any union beyond established positions in trying to buy reform. In this Bill the Government has proposed timid reforms for new recruits and does not address the serious issues that must be faced if we are to deliver better government.

A Bill such as this would make more sense if we had good systems of delegation, performance management and financial management in place and could see that recruitment difficulties were at the core of the issue. If this Bill addressed promotion as well as new recruits and swept away many of the artificial restrictions that prevent the public service achieving its potential, then I would be more persuaded that this would complement much of the good work being done in strategic management. I fear that this Bill, proposed as a key support structure for decentralisation, will drag the public service in the wrong direction.

This is not the fault of the Bill; it is the marriage of it to a decentralisation process that has not been properly thought out. The Government has not evaluated the threats of the process and its difficulties have not been troubleshot with a view to finding resolutions before commitments were made. This is the tragedy of the approach we are taking to public service reform. Opportunities are being missed. Short-term political decisions are driving some of the thinking and the long-term consistent work is being compromised by this approach.

Ms Burton

The Labour Party has grave reservations about sections of this Bill, especially those relating to the appointment of special advisers and canvassing for public service appointments. The Ethics in Public Office Act 1995, initiated by the Labour Party in the rainbow Government, forbade the appointment of special advisers to permanent positions in the Civil Service. The Minister of State has confirmed that the new Bill proposes to repeal that section without explanation from the Minister in the explanatory memorandum. The Bill provides that the newly established commission for public services appointments may allow special advisers to be appointed to established positions. This means that special advisers may be able to circumvent the rules on open, competitive recruitment to the public service, despite the claim made by the Minister of State.

The response by the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, to the Labour Party's criticism of the Bill is to say that the public interest will be protected by such appointments being governed by a code of practice to be approved by the new commissioners for public service appointments. The Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, reiterated this in his speech. This is a feeble substitute for a legislative bar on such appointments. The Labour Party will table an amendment to have the bar on the appointment of advisers clearly set out in the new Bill.

The statement from the Minister for Finance, published on the Department's website, states:

the public interest is protected in the new Bill by provisions which prevent the appointment of anybody to a permanent and pensionable position unless this is done by a selection process which has been approved by the independent Commissioners for Public Service Appointments and which has taken place under a code of practice issued and authorised by them.

A code of practice is a poor substitute for legislative certainty. Will the Minister of State inform us that, if section 19(5) of the Ethics in Public Office Act is to be deleted, why a similar, clear and unambiguous section repeating the bar has not been included in the new Bill? Codes of conduct should be omitted as they are variable. The Labour Party will demand a clear replacement ban barring the appointment by Ministers — as has happened in the past — of special advisers in the last days of Government to permanent, established positions in the Civil Service. The Minister of State has not answered the Labour Party's correct and justified qualms on this.

The Labour Party also seeks amendments to section 56 that provides for a statutory ban on canvassing for appointments. These are now, correctly, subject to criminal sanction. However, a breach of the ban on canvassing gives rise to criminal liability on the part of canvasser only. A Minister who was canvassed and acted on foot of such a communication to secure an appointment is not guilty of a criminal offence. My party will submit an amendment that makes the reception of such interference by a Minister a criminal offence. I want the Minister of State to give a clear commitment that this will be included in the Bill.

In the discussions on decentralisation, many Government Deputies commented on the number of communications they received from civil servants anxious to relocate to their constituencies. Deputies referred to this in the House and also at the meetings of the Committee on Finance and the Public Service where they boasted about the quantity of correspondence. Any use of influence by politicians in public service appointments and relocations should be statutorily barred if we are to maintain the integrity of the public service recruitment process. The Government has been in office for seven years and I understand the all-powerful feeling that applies to its members. However, I am sure this is something the Government will live to regret in future.

The Government proposes to break up the centralised public service recruitment system that has served the State well since its foundation. While the Labour Party is anxious to support any changes that improve the delivery of public services, there are many questions that need answers to justify such a radical change of policy. This is especially true in the context of the Government's decision to decentralise 44 Departments and agencies throughout the State. The Bill proposes to dismantle the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission and to replace them with the two new bodies, namely, the commission for public service appointments and the public appointments service. It will allow Secretaries General of Departments to acquire recruitment licences to recruit staff directly or to use private recruitment agencies who become licence holders under the Bill.

While the origin of the legislation appears to have been negotiated as part of Sustaining Progress, there has been no public debate otherwise on the merits or demerits of these radical changes in recruitment to the public service.

While the existing public service recruitment procedures can be seen to be slow and cumbersome in certain respects, especially at the height of the Celtic tiger, public confidence in the integrity of the public service recruitment process, whether to the permanent Civil Service or to agencies such as the Garda Síochána has been high. The Government is risking this reputation for integrity by the lack of debate and clarity on the proposed changes.

With the localisation of recruitment provided for in the new Bill, together with the decentralisation of 44 Departments and agencies throughout the State, there is a real fear that there could and will be excessive localisation of recruitment and the loss of a unified Civil Service career structure and appointments system which, for the most part, has served the State well since Independence. By relocating Departments and agencies throughout the country, the question arises as to whether a Department or agency based in counties Kerry or Mayo end up favouring local applicants for public service jobs. After the country gained its independence, the first Government introduced the Local Appointments Commission partly to cut out excessive canvassing by local politicians in favour of local candidates' appointment to local authorities.

Members will recall the awful competition in the aftermath of the decentralisation announcement between the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, and the unfortunate Member on the Government side, Deputy Fleming, who are all representatives of the Laoighis-Offaly constituency, as to who was quickest in bringing home the bacon. The Minister considered himself the winner. The Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, had posters and leaflets welcoming civil servants to Parlon country. I want an assurance that the Bill will not facilitate a culture of local favouritism in appointments to Departments located outside Dublin.We need to be reassured where appointments to decentralised Departments are concerned that, where somebody from County Donegal applies to a Department in County Kerry or somebody from Dublin, where a third of the population now lives, applies for an appointment around the country, a culture of excessive localism will not develop in time.

Mr. Parlon

We will introduce some balance. It will not just be Dublin based.

Ms Burton

To my knowledge, civil servants have competed successfully in an open competition for appointment to the Civil Service, the Garda Síochána and other posts in Dublin and throughout the country. The parents of young people starting out on a career could be satisfied up to now that, having entered a competition for the Civil Service, appointments would be decided in order of merit under the aegis of the Civil Service Commission. If the system in Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission is not broken, why fix it? Confidence in public institutions has been all but destroyed because of corruption in certain areas in recent years. On this issue there has been insufficient consultation, thought and perhaps respect for the history of this State.

I wish to quote from Mary E. Daly's book, The Buffer State: the Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment. The Ceann Comhairle as a commissioner is probably familiar with this history. It recalls the appointment of the local appointments commissioners. I want to inform the House what happened and why public service and the local authority appointments were correctly taken away from the direct influence of politicians and Ministers. There was a good reason for it.

Mr. Parlon

There is no intention of doing anything differently.

Ms Burton

In her book Ms Daly states:

IRA veterans were not alone in expecting preference. If the Mulcahy papers are typical, every minister was bombarded with requests from friends and acquaintances, parish priests, reverend mothers or Christian Brothers seeking employment for relatives, neighbours or former pupils.

One of the correspondents, Jim Kennedy, town clerk of Nenagh referred to the widespread belief that one can always "pull the strings" in Ireland. That was in the 1920s.

I refer to the statement last year by Mr. Tom Geraghty, the general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union, on Civil Service reform in which he states:

In a society where pull and influence are second nature to the point where they can be described as part of what we are, the reputation for probity on the part of the commission, the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointment Commissioners, has always stood as a bulwark against corrupting influences. These proposals could all be put at risk.

The Minister can respond to the Labour Party fears by introducing clear amendments and accepting from the Labour Party clear amendments to the proposed legislation that would put beyond doubt the capacity of Ministers to interfere in the appointments process. That is all that we ask, and I would have thought that, as a member of the Progressive Democrats, the Minister would have agreed with me.

The three-man boards of the Local Appointments Commission and the Civil Service Commission, run by the Ceann Comhairle, the Secretary General to the Government and the senior Secretary General from the Department of Finance — the lonesome threesome — have done their supervisory job well. It must be asked why both boards of three will be replaced by nine others on each board? I have heard no complaints that the three were inadequate to the job. The six extra appointees will have associated costs. Of the six, only half must show clear knowledge of the Civil Service. We will have two new boards, each with nine members, and leaving out the present three members of each board, we will have 12 new plum appointments to State boards.

The Minister could again divest the Bill of the odour of patronage and jobs for the boys by making these non-party political appointments and by taking the power from the Minister of appointment except by designation. I do not know the reason for nine commissioners on both the new boards. I have heard no complaints about the job done by the existing three. I would like an explanation on costs.

Money appears to be no object for the decentralisation proposals. Approximately two years ago, the Taoiseach presided over the opening of state-of-the-art new offices with dedicated interview rooms, conferencing facilities and so on for the Civil Service Commissioners in Abbey Street beside Jervis Street at a cost of €3 million to the Exchequer. It is not clear from the Bill if the new body will also be relocated to Youghal. What will happen to this purpose-built building, which also cost €3 million? Will it be like the relocation of the Legal Aid Board to Cahirciveen, where the 42 transfer appointments that arose as a consequence could not be filled by transferees from Dublin? Additional people had to be appointed instead and the Legal Aid Board now has two headquarters, effectively. The staff who are entitled to remain in Dublin stay there, while the new people work from Cahirciveen. That has been done at a cost to local legal aid services in areas such as Blanchardstown, which is in my constituency, and I presume in other parts of the country where legal aid services, particularly for less well off members of the community, are urgently required. It appears there is no money for our hospitals but we seem to have money to burn for the additional cost of the new structure, including purpose-built offices at a cost of €3 million.

The Minister of State commented on recruitment agencies and the granting of licences. For a number of years, it has been the practice in the Civil Service — it is a practice that I endorse — for external consultants and experts to be members of interview boards where they have a special expertise to offer. In that way, interview boards are not simply confined to serving members of public services and local bodies. However, will the Minister of State spell out the terms and conditions under which private recruitment agencies will operate as recruiters for the public service? The Minister of State said in his speech that we now have many recruitment agencies in the country, and indeed we have. Some of them prospered to the point of making fortunes and then collapsed, while others carry on a good level of business.

I would like the Minister of State to spell out in detail under what criteria these recruitment agencies will operate. I am particularly anxious to know that. Some of these recruitment agencies might be influenced by American standards whereby, in recruiting for multinationals, candidates are effectively screened for what one might call not so much their party political compatibility to the company to which they are being recruited, but rather their overall political compatibility. In other words, somebody who might be deemed to be of a too radical or inquiring mindset might, in the general psychological profiling and screening used by such agencies, be cut out of the recruitment process.

Before Deputy John Bruton arrived I reminded the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, of the work that was done by the first Government of the State in appointing the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission.

The Minister of State flew the flag to welcome his civil servants to Parlon country. However, if and when decentralisation becomes established ten or 20 years down the road, and Civil Service recruitment has been broken up among 44 agencies, what will happen to the unified Civil Service? In addition, promotions across a dispersed and localised Civil Service will be much more difficult. There is also the question that if a Department is based in Kerry, what will happen to candidates who apply from other parts of the country? How can we ensure that they will get a fair crack of the whip? It has become fashionable for Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats to claim that decentralisation is part of balancing the scales as against Dublin. The fact that the Civil Service is based in Dublin has never barred people around the country from joining it. We are entitled to ask, however, if excessive localisation and the break up of the existing Civil Service recruitment structure will produce a culture of localisation.

Deputy Richard Bruton alluded to the fact that this deal was stuck, and the Bill arises, as part of the negotiations for Sustaining Progress. As I understand it, several problems were identified in those negotiations. At the height of the Celtic tiger period, people left the Civil Service and it was difficult to stage Civil Service recruitment drives and get enough people to take on the jobs available through competition. There were several reasons for that. The private sector was roaring ahead but also public servants were being considerably underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts by factors of up to 20%, particularly in areas such as information technology.

There has also been a desire on the part of Secretaries General of a number of Departments to have the power to hire and fire. The Bill adopts the terms of the Unfair Dismissals Act for the public service, rather than the previous situation whereby a civil servant effectively had to be dismissed by the Cabinet. I would welcome the application of the Unfair Dismissals Act to the Civil Service code. However, in attempting to introduce such elements of reform, which the Labour Party supports, the Minister of State must also ensure that the Bill is not contaminated or tainted by suggestions that, in different ways, Ministers and other politicians will be able to exercise undue influence.

I wish to raise another query, which perhaps the Minister of State will answer. My understanding is that the regulations relating to part-time working will also apply to the Civil Service, as a consequence of the Bill. The legal interpretation I have received is that with the application of general employment regulations to the public service, various elements of regulations and legislation regarding part-time work will apply to the public service.

Currently, there is a capacity, particularly within local authorities, to appoint people to temporary and part-time positions. This applies, for instance, to students during the summer holidays. In many parts of the country, they are normally not subject to open competition recruitment. The provisions of legislation governing part-time work apply in colleges, for instance, where part-time or temporary work contracts are concluded by way of a public appointment structure. If people work on a part-time or temporary basis for a sufficient period, under evolving EU legislation they accumulate full-time rights. Considering how general employment legislation will apply to public servants, including local authorities, will the Minister ask his civil servants the position regarding people who get temporary appointments through limited or no competition, for example summer jobs, in their local authority? Unless the situation is regularised and the position regarding temporary recruitment is clarified, it could be a back door to a permanent position in the Civil Service.

The Government appoints working groups, committees, etc., on any and every matter. This fundamental change in how matters have operated in the State since the time of KevinO'Higgins is amazing. This House has had no opportunity to discuss these changes. I suggest that the particular process suggested in this Bill should be agreed between all parties in the House so that public confidence in the probity and integrity of recruitment can be retained and maintained.

Mr. J. Bruton

Hear, hear.

Ms Burton

This is critical. I am prepared to give an undertaking on that on behalf of the Labour Party.

This Bill arose from the process involved in Sustaining Progress. The parties involved in that agreement are all batting for their own corner — the Government, the Civil Service unions, employers, farmers, etc. Doing a deal on something as fundamental to the State as public service recruitment through the mechanism of Sustaining Progress is not the same as having a proper and full public debate and discussion, followed by all-party agreement. This would maintain the probity and integrity of our public recruitment system rather than having people feel it is tarnished by jobs for the boys and an inside track for certain political parties and Ministers.

We do not have a system whereby candidates can be nominated by a wide variety of sources, including other political and Opposition parties, to go before an independent agency to have their credentials assessed and to be directly appointed. They do not even come before the committee system in this House, as we see in other parliaments which examine the membership of such public bodies. As a result of our appointment procedures we get flawed decisions. We had an example of such a flawed decision with An Bord Pleanála's decision in my constituency last week. An Bord Pleanála is an agency appointed in the manner about which I have spoken. Its members are direct political appointments, members from the Civil Service, local government and IBEC as a social partner. It has no representative of community interests or environmental groups.

We also have the compromising of independent action from standalone agencies because of the method of appointment to such groups. An Bord Pleanála is meant to be a standalone agency, yet decisions are made not on planning grounds but on the nature of Government policy at a given time. What is the point, therefore, of having a Government standalone agency?

If the Government was proposing to introduce a technical measure to bring in a new all-embracing body, it might be welcome. Instead of putting in place systems which will work — I feel the Civil Service Commission works better than the Local Appointments Commission — the two new bodies will create confusion rather than clarity in the area of public service recruitment. The commission for public service appointments proposed by the Government seems to be a type of appointments regulator. The Government has developed a mania in recent years for standalone agencies rather than the direct work agencies to which we have been used.

Secretaries General of Departments now have an option of either going through the public appointments service or of getting a licence to make their own appointments. There is no adequate explanation in the Bill as to the reason the Government wants to do this. If it is a development of the strategic management initiative, this has not been spelled out in the Bill. If the Government intends to bring more able, creative and independent-thinking people into the Civil Service, I cannot see how it will be done through this procedure. This procedure allows either a laissez-faire or standardised approach to public service recruitment. Perhaps, because we have a coalition Government, it does not know what it wants. It is promoting a Bill which is putting forward two different approaches with regard to political appointments.

Despite what other Deputies have said, I agree the Local Appointments Commission is in need of reform. As someone who has been involved in local government for over 12 years, I have often found frustrating the mechanism by which people have been appointed. There have been problems with interview procedures where people being appointed in Cork, for example, had to be interviewed by people from Donegal and Monaghan and people from Kerry and Tipperary had to do the interviews for people from County Cavan. I would like to see an end to this type of practice.

The range of local government legislation we have seen introduced in recent years which allows people appointed through the Local Appointments Commission to write their own job specification is a major flaw in the legislation. The Government should have addressed this issue in this Bill or shown some indication of wanting to address the issue. In Cork City Council, for example, I know of an incoming city manager who, before he even took up his position, asked the council to oblige him with the right to decide whether he could extend his seven-year contract. That request was acceded to. That type of practice regarding contracts offered to public servants demonstrates the need for reform in this area. What the Government suggests is not reform but just a shuffling of the deckchairs.

What is the Government policy with regard to reform in the area of Government appointments. Does the Government intend to continue with political patronage or has it any proposals to fit in with a new commission of public appointments which will take all public appointments into account? Will it carry on regardless and appoint party political people on the basis of services given to political parties, thereby diminishing the agencies to which they are appointed by not taking proper account of their skills and abilities and subsequently watering down any decisions those bodies are likely to make? How does the Minister of State envisage the two new bodies will fit in with his proposals for what I must insist on calling his "office relocation programme"? I have seen no decentralisation proposals from the Government.

Mr. J. Bruton

It has centralised the health service, not decentralised it.

Mr. Boyle

That is one area in which the concept has been seen. Decentralisation or centralisation relates to the decision-making process. We will continue to have centralised decision-making bodies in Departments wherever they are located around the country.

The difficulties inherent in the Government's rash attempt to move offices have been pointed out by many and are being confirmed by the week. They have been further cited by Civil Service unions. They underline a culture in the Civil Service which this Bill could have addressed but does not. Since the inception of the State, the Government has believed in the concept of generalism among civil servants. It is held not to matter whether a civil servant works in one Department or another or that a Department is relocated from Dublin to another part of the country as long as a certain number of people are available to staff the new office. My experience as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts is that even the limited practice of office relocation has involved the loss moneys to the State due to the poor management of change. Costs have been incurred due to the loss of specialisms within Departments and the difficulties of finding people to make up the numbers between the new centralised location and the old centralised location. As a result, the committee has had to deal with the consequences of ill thought out policies. I fear policies will continue to be ill thought out in the future. I hope the Committee of Public Accounts will not see the same things happen in Laoighis-Offaly in a year or two. They have happened in several Departments already. The manner in which the Government is handling this issue does not inspire much confidence.

This Bill represents a missed opportunity. There is scope for real reform in public service recruitment and this legislation should have embraced public appointments generally to lay waste finally to political patronage. The opportunity should have been taken to instil full public confidence in the process. Instead, the Government has chosen to travel a more narrow road by rationalising two bodies only to replace them with two others. This will further confuse rather than clarify the system. Rather than attempt to amend a Bill of this nature, we should seek to introduce more focused legislation.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin

The explanatory memorandum to this Bill states that the new flexibilities it contains will support the Government in its decentralisation programme. How exactly the legislation will help is not clear, but that the Government needs help is an undoubted fact. Since the announcement of decentralisation in the Minister for Finance's Budget Statement, the proposed programme has been slowly unravelling. There was an initial expression of surprise from the Civil Service unions which highlighted the poor quality of the Government's communication with civil servants on decentralisation. The programme has huge personal implications not only for individual civil servants but, indeed, for their families. We are not talking about just over 10,000 people, but perhaps 50,000 people who will be, I hope, voluntarily displaced.

We have heard that a previously agreed Teagasc decentralisation was postponed because it was superseded by the Government's new plans. The real reason for the postponement became apparent when it was learned that Teagasc staff had reached a preliminary agreement with the Department of Finance and the Department of Agriculture and Food for an average once-off payment of €6,000 for those who opted to relocate outside Dublin. Will the Minister clarify if it is the Government's intention to renege on this agreement and to stop the Teagasc decentralisation lest the payment lead to knock-on claims from other decentralised civil servants? The unions are justifiably angry at this development. They have pointed out that the agreement was self-financing from the restructuring plan.

As it relates to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the matter has caused huge concern among civil servants. It raises a question mark over the claim that decentralisation will be voluntary in nature. It raises a real question about future recruitment practice. The question must be posed whether all such posts in future will be advertised without mention of a specific location for employment. That is a very important matter.

This all adds up to a right mess which is solely of the Government's making. It casts doubt over a decentralisation programme which should be beneficial to civil servants and to every one of the host communities and their wider hinterlands. Having promised decentralisation since the 1999 budget, the Government has brought its programme forward in a hamfisted way with an eye not to possible delivery but only in the context of the upcoming elections in June.

I am anxious to hear how the Bill will aid the decentralisation programme. I look forward to hearing the Minister explaining this in more detail. The Bill arises partly out of the Sustaining Progress agreement. It seeks to reform the system of recruitment to the public service. It introduces significant changes and raises a number of questions and issues which I wish to address briefly. Perhaps these matters have been addressed and clarified in the process of negotiating the Sustaining Progress agreement, but such is the nature of that process as operated by the Government that we, the elected representatives of the Oireachtas, know absolutely nothing about it. We are effectively excluded. We do not have the benefit of the direct dialogue between the Government and unions on this matter. This is especially regrettable in the context of this legislation which concerns those employed directly by the State on behalf of the people whom we represent.

It should be said that, by and large, we have a very commendable Civil Service. It is staffed by dedicated people and has rightly — I emphasise rightly — earned praise for the impartiality and fairness with which it carries out its functions. Contrary to the lingering myth of a highly paid job for life, the lower grades in the Civil Service are staffed by some of the worst paid workers in the State. That is a disgrace and it should be rectified. If it is not rectified, the new recruitment structures set up by this Bill will find it extremely difficult to attract people to Civil Service jobs that pay far less than equivalent positions within the private sector.

Get on to Washington and be done with it. My main concern about the Bill is the role it gives private sector recruitment agencies in the process of Civil Service recruitment. They will, of course, act under the conditions and codes of practice drawn up by the new commission for public service appointments. Departments and other branches of the public service will have the option of using private recruitment agencies or the new public appointments service. However, I wonder if all the potential problems of such a procedure have been fully examined. Will these private firms be as fully accountable and transparent as the existing structures for appointments? I hope the Minister of State will elaborate in his summing up and on Committee Stage.

The Bill provides that the Minister can exempt certain categories from this Bill, and Government appointees to boards, etc., are automatically exempt. I have repeatedly argued for a fair and proper system of appointment for such positions. I regret that the opportunity of this Bill was not used to put one in place. This Bill comes at a time when the Government has frozen public service recruitment and when many branches of the public service are understaffed and unable to properly fulfil their functions. This is especially so at local government level. The public is rightly more concerned with the delivery or, in many cases, the non-delivery of the services they need than with the nuts and bolts of how appointments are made.

Another concern I have is the need to include in this legislation in some way the requirements for affirmative action, for example, with regard to the hiring of people with a disability. There are no affirmative action measures incorporated in this Bill. That is a particular failing, particularly as today the Taoiseach is engaging in a back-slapping exercise on the European Year of People with Disabilities. Again, I would like to hear what the Government has to say on this matter. The Garda Síochána is covered by this Bill, but that is an area which requires separate and detailed legislation as part of the fundamental reform of the Garda which is urgently required.

I look forward to addressing these and other issues that have been raised in the course of the debate on this Bill. I would ask the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, to address some of the questions I have raised in his response onSecond Stage.

Mr. J. Higgins

I am afraid we are starting at a huge disadvantage in the consideration of this Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003 because of the attitude of this Government towards the public service. We cannot trust this Government with the public service. Its neo-liberal philosophy, its increasingly right-wing philosophy and policies are inimical to the very concept of public services. That has been more than borne out by the raft of key sectors of the public sector that have been privatised. The Government's approach to the decentralisation of the public service showed the utter contempt it has for the public service and for the thousands of public servants who perform such critical work in this State. The very Minister who introduced the Bill today, the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, with all the finesse of a greedy claim jumper in the old west, laid claim to a whole sector of the public service for his constituency almost before the Minister for Finance sat down on budget day having made his announcement on decentralisation.

Mr. Parlon

Immediately afterwards.

Mr. J. Higgins

Deputy Parlon could be compared to a slaver of old, sailing down through Laoighis-Offaly with a human cargo to deliver to the area in the interests of advancing his own political career, displaying utter contempt for public service workers. What confidence can we have in regard to this Government coming forward with what it claims is a major reform for the betterment of the public service?

I have serious misgivings about some of the provisions of this Bill. In the devolution to local management there is a greater risk of the possibility of discrimination against candidates presenting for employment. There is undoubtedly a possibility of more covert political vetting of people presenting for appointment on the basis of their ideas. The current Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, for example, is a notorious advocate of privatisation of key public services. I certainly would not be convinced that the philosophy of that Minister cannot be transferred to the appointments commission in various ways. We could, therefore, have discrimination against very well qualified applicants on the basis of whether or not they were advocates of privatisation, or whether or not they favoured the public service and were philosophically committed to the public service rather than privatisation. This is a very real danger that will have to be examined before this Bill finishes its passage through the Dáil.

On local authorities, the Bill outlines many general policies and proposals on the devolution of recruitment. Will the appointment mechanism for county managers, for example, be changed under this Bill? Will it be possible for the Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, through the public appointments service, to have county managers recruited in a particular way? I have a very real problem with this, given the right-wing bent of the current Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government or possibly future Ministers, on key environmental issues, for example, incineration as a method of dealing with waste management, or the privatisation of refuse services. No one can convince me that if responsibility for recruitment is devolved in this way, the philosophy that has been pushed in the Department for almost seven years by this Government will not filter through in the vetting of those applying for senior positions in local government. That is something that must be carefully scrutinised.

The provision in the Bill for the privatisation of recruitment to the public sector is astounding. We should not be surprised by it, however, given the commitment of the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, to right-wing government and the Government's general policy in this regard. This sinister proposal is inimical to the well-being of public services. Private recruitment agencies will usually be infused with the values of privatised industry, including multinational corporations. Rather than having a commitment to what the public service is about, many privateers are hostile to it. This is a dangerous step for the future of the public service because it jeopardises the recruitment of public servants committed to public service. It makes more likely the introduction into the public service of the multinational corporations' philosophy of private capitalism, which is increasingly promoted by the Government.

The public service I want to see is one committed to delivering a good quality of service to the people without introducing the values of Ryanair and other companies run by new-age capitalists. The interests of ordinary people are not foremost in the minds of such people. I oppose the potential privatisation of recruitment to the public services.

I note that the Minister proposes to retain for himself the right to appoint the commissioners to the Commission for Public Service Appointments and to the Public Appointments Service. This is in line with the policy pursued when many supposedly independent boards were being established in all areas of public activity. Will the Fianna Fáil tradition of appointing party hacks to such important positions, which has been maintained by the Government, apply in this instance? People have been appointed to many crucial public bodies and semi-State companies not on the basis of their expertise in the relevant area of activity but on the basis of their loyalty as hacks to the dominant political party. The Bill provides for the continuation of this system. Many questions remain to be answered. This Bill is not in the interests of a better public service.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I call Deputy Nolan.

Mr. J. Bruton

I wish to point out that I have been waiting a long time to speak.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

In the good old days, the Chair was free to call a Deputy if he or she had been waiting a long time to contribute to a debate. Decisions are made by the Whips in these times, so I must alternate with the other side of the House by calling Deputy Nolan.

Mr. J. Bruton

I thank the Chair for his explanation.

Mr. O'Connor

We are not guilty.

I would like to highlight a matter indicative of what we are trying to avoid by introducing the Bill. Before I became a member of a local authority, rate collectors were purely political appointees. It was right and proper that the system of appointing them was changed. Any member of a county council present when rate collectors were appointed could only say that the system was wrong. The political beliefs of applicants had a large bearing on whether they were offered the position in question. A great deal depended on the party which happened to be in control of the relevant local authority. Those days are behind us and no one would like to see them return.

The decision to introduce the Bill was correct because the economic and social climate has changed in recent years. If a section of a Department needed short-term expertise in a specific area, it was unable to recruit the necessary specialist swiftly. The role of consultants has become dominant in recent years. It would be interesting to ascertain the amount of money paid by local authorities and Departments to consultants in the past ten years. This money had to be spent because public bodies were unable, under the terms of the system in vogue at the time, to acquire the specialised knowledge they required to help them make serious decisions. Certain consultants have made large fortunes from the shortcomings of the recruitment system within the departmental structure.

The system of recruitment to the public sector has worked well and served the country well. It is right, however, that we should examine our systems from time to time and make the necessary changes and improvements. The timescale involved in recruitment to the Civil Service has always been a problem for senior management in Departments. The fact that we have succeeded in ensuring that quality public servants found their way to the top is a testament to the success of the system which has been in operation for such a long time. In my dealings with public servants during my time as a Member of the House, I have found that the standard of senior and mid-ranking civil servants is as good as anywhere in the European Union or elsewhere.

A new code of conduct for civil servants, advocating a customer-friendly approach, has been introduced in the past ten years. Politicians and the general public found it difficult to get a speedy reply to queries about 15 years ago. Some people were deterred from seeking information or making queries because of the attitude of some Departments. Senior civil servants and their Ministers brought about a change in the system, however, with the result that people now feel free to pick up the telephone to seek information. They receive a speedy response to their queries from civil servants. That was a step in the right direction. What the Minister is now introducing is also an improvement on a system that has worked well.

In regard to decentralisation, I refer to what Deputy Ó Caoláin said about the lack of interest among staff in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to seek a transfer to my home town of Carlow. Prior to the announcement by the Minister on decentralisation, I tabled a number of parliamentary questions to various Ministers. The responses I got indicated that over 400 civil servants from various Departments had applied to transfer to Carlow. In the context of 250 jobs being transferred from Dublin to Carlow, the Deputy need not worry that sufficient applicants will be available to transfer there.

Mr. J. Bruton

What about Teagasc?

Mr. Nolan

Carlow will probably be one of the most successful areas in the country in terms of the decentralisation of civil and public servants. Following the Minister's announcement the numbers seeking a transfer to there have increased. As a result of the movement within and between Departments, one will find that more people will transfer to Carlow as it is within commuting distance of Dublin.

I envisage that the timescale for decentralisation will be shorter than was originally anticipated by the Government. The first step we saw in the context of recruitment was the seven-year contract introduced for county managers by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. This system has worked well from the point of view of the county managers to whom I have spoken, as it gives them a timescale in which they have to perform.

The changes being introduced are vital to ensuring that decentralisation works and works well. A significant element of the programme of public service modernisation was agreed with the public service unions in the negotiations on Sustaining Progress. The unions have been fully consulted about these measures and are aware of the proposed legislation which the Minister is now introducing.

Up to now there has been a lack of flexibility in the recruitment system. When enacted the legislation should give more flexibility to Departments when seeking to employ specialists in particular areas. The changes being introduced are vital to ensure that Departments operate effectively. We must be mindful that as society has changed, so too has the role and function of the civil and public service.

Giving Secretaries General the ability to manage their Departments will bring about more efficiency and ensure the working of the Department is more effective. The proposed changes will allow for the fastest possible response to the changing economic and social climate. The Government could not allow the continuation of the current bottlenecks which exist in certain sections of Departments. No organisation could allow itself to be put in the position of being unable to recruit staff that are urgently required. I commend the Minister on the introduction of the Bill and look forward to its speedy passage through the House. It is an opportune moment for this move in the right direction.

Mr. O'Connor

I am conscious of the fact that in taking my ten minutes I am holding up a distinguished former Taoiseach. As the Leas-Cheann Comhairle said, this is now our system.

Mr. J. Bruton

Not at all. I am sorry, I did not mean to make that point.

Mr. O'Connor

Perhaps the Deputy will refrain from telling the nice Fine Gael people in Tallaght that I did that because I want to keep on their good side.

I heard a soundbite from the Green Party earlier concerning mock sessions. Such a view is unfortunate. It is good that the Dáil has come back early. We conducted much good business yesterday when the Taoiseach was present, as well as today. I note from the attendance today that the Members present include party leaders and other distinguished Members of the House. I do not believe we are attending mock sessions, they are very important.

I compliment the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, on his work. He is well able to defend himself from colleagues across the floor. He is doing a good job and long may that continue. I have lots of things I want to discuss with him in regard to my constituency and I would be happy to have an opportunity to do so.

The need for change provided an impetus for the legislation. Throughout our lives there are periods in which we need to change. Without being facetious about it, I was always happy to stay in Tallaght and not move into the city. It was because the good people of Dublin South-West were kind enough to elect me, I now have to come into Dublin city every day. This is something I am not very happy about, nor are some of my colleagues for various reasons. I had to change my life and I would be just as happy if this were not the case. However, change is a feature of all our lives and we all go through such periods. Perhaps the older we get, the more used we become to adapting to change. Change is a theme which recurs through the legislation and I feel very positive about this.

The legislation originated from a need within the public service which arose during the height of the skills drain from the public to the private sector between 1998 and 2001. It allows for the recruitment of replacement specialists on a more streamlined basis. It is ironic that the Bill and the benchmarking process, another component of a belated response to that era, should now become the catalyst for a radical and fundamental shift in the performance, activity and reorganisation of the civil and public service.

Following the announcement in the budget of the decentralisation programme involving the relocation of over 10,000 public service jobs to 53 provincial centres throughout 25 counties, my colleague the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, has started a process that will contribute greatly to regional development. It may also change the national, or perhaps Dublin, view that the national interest is only determined in Dublin and reduce the growth of population and infrastructural demands that have become a major disincentive to the Dublin area.

Tallaght is a major population centre located a short distance from the city centre. It is the third largest population centre in the country, in which a number of Departments already successfully operate and it contains further potential for the future movement of public service staff. During my time in the House I will keep this matter on the agenda.

I read with interest the newspaper articles on the difficulties these changes pose for the various parties promoting interest, or lack of it, on the proposed moves. From my conversations with civil servants, who do talk to us, while some do not wish to relocate, a majority of civil servants appear to want to move out of the city. If this is the case, the amount of interdepartmental transfers in the coming years will be significant which will place a major demand on training sections within Departments as well as the Civil Service itself.

This level of change and movement of personnel offers a unique opportunity for the restructuring of management and updating of work practices in all areas of the service to make it more efficient. Newly transferred, experienced, enthusiastic and committed staff will be capable of rising to the challenges which relocation will provide. In addition to the opportunity for civil servants, the moves will also provide an opportunity at the 53 locations across the country for local development and create the foundation for the positive growth of local communities as well as the provision of local services that are not creaking at the edges and failing to meet current needs.

It is important that public sector workers and their unions come to terms with the changes envisaged. Their contribution to their place of work is and must continue to be acknowledged and rewarded but a stark reminder is necessary to remind them that the taxpayer pays the Bill. There is an erroneous perception that public sector workers own part of the body in which they work. The blocking of change by sectoral interests against the larger interests of the country, when it is the public purse that supports these sectors, is not the way forward.

This Bill has been drafted to reform the recruitment and appointment process of the Civil Service and certain other bodies in the public service and, for that purpose, to provide a new management structure to replace the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commissions. It is appropriate to acknowledge the contribution of the work of the commission to the public sector. While reading through the annual report for 2001 I realised for the first time the level of activity in which it is engaged in processing more than 49,000 applications and appointing more than 5,000 candidates in that year. I have mentioned the value for money mantra in previous debates. The average cost per appointment that year was €2,000, which, in comparison with private sector recruitment companies, offers great value to the taxpayer for this highly accredited service.

The Bill will establish the Commission for Public Service Appointments to oversee the implementation and development of these structures in the public interest, taking account of the need to uphold the standard of impartiality in the recruitment and appointment process. In addition, it will provide for the establishment of the Public Appointments Service as a recruitment and selection body for the Civil Service and other public service bodies. It will allow the introduction of flexibility into the recruitment process by enabling the licensing by the commission or the Public Appointments Service for any part of these public services to undertake their own recruitment in respect of one or more classes of employees. This Bill will contribute towards providing a modern and efficient framework for public service recruitment, which will allow for increased flexibility while maintaining the current high standards by giving Departments and other public service bodies the ability to recruit staff directly as well as through a centralised system. It will support the Government in its decentralisation programme and provide career paths for civil servants around the country which up to now were not available unless they returned to Dublin. The Bill repeals the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956 and introduces a new framework for recruitment to the Civil Service.

I am sorry to mention this on a day on which we are all being polite, but I have seen the Members opposite engaging in point-scoring in the media over the appointment of special advisers to permanent positions. With some disappointment I note that while their misinterpretation of that section of the Bill was placed in the public arena, the Minister's rejection of the Labour Party's contention has gone unnoticed.

Ms Burton

The Minister was able to prove nothing. He was not able to answer the Labour Party's questions, unfortunately.

Mr. O'Connor

The Deputy knows that heckling upsets me. She should not interrupt me in my last couple of minutes. When she was missing earlier I intended to describe her as one of the popular members of the Labour Party who is present today. Let us retain our civility.

Ms Burton

I thank the Deputy, but the fact remains that the Minister was unable to answer the questions.

Mr. O'Connor

A happy new year to the Deputy also.

The framework consists of an oversight body, to be known as the Commission for Public Service Appointments, a centralised recruitment body, to be known as the Public Appointments Service, and a system of voluntary recruitment licensing. Although I am at a loss as to why there is a need for the two entities, I accept that wider and wiser counsel has gone into this detailed and extensive Bill. As a Fianna Fáil backbencher I do not intend to go into detail on the sections of the Bill. However, I acknowledge its importance in the continued development of our public service system. I commend the Bill to the House and look forward to supporting it.

Mr. J. Bruton

This week, when the Dáil resumes, is a good time to consider the performance of the Government in public service management over its seven years in office. A Government should be judged by the things it can control. It should not be judged by the things it cannot direct, such as the world economy or international interest rates, but by such things as management of the human resources under its control. That is what public service management is about. This Bill is supposedly about the management of the public service. However, it is also, unfortunately, about dismantling some of the greatest achievements of the Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael parties, namely, the Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924, for which Kevin O'Higgins and others were responsible, and the Civil Service Regulation Act 1956, for which the late Gerard Sweetman, with whom I served briefly in this House, was responsible. These two Acts gave us a unified Civil Service, unified in its service to the nation, its probity, its system of recruitment, its non-political character and its absence of regional or sectional loyalties. The Government, in this Bill, proposes to put all that aside and replace it with a structure that will be disaggregated, disunited and disbursed.

Before accepting the advice of the Government on such a fundamental matter of public management, the House should ask itself whether the Government has a record of such success in this area as to warrant its advice being taken on such a serious matter. In preparing this speech I reviewed some published opinions of the Government's advisers on its performance in public service management, including the NESC report, the PA Consulting report, the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the GM market research report. As Taoiseach, I put in place the tools for my successor to use. I published the White Paper, Delivering Better Government, in 1996 to give effect to the strategic management initiative and reorganise the Civil Service on the basis of greater openness, customer focus and value for money.

In March 1997 the of which I was Taoiseach Government, through the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Quinn, introduced the system of comprehensive public expenditure reviews to guarantee value for money and re-enacted the Public Service Management Act 1997 to give Ministers and the Taoiseach all the legal authority and powers needed to put their policies into effect. How has this Government used these powers over the past seven years? What value has it added during its years in power?

The NESC had the following things to say about how the public service was managed in that period. It agreed unanimously that after six years there were still "weaknesses" in the management of public expenditure. It said that the national development plan was "unlikely to be delivered either on time or on budget". Speaking of the waste crisis, it unanimously decided that "the problem seems to be passed from one agent to another". It expressed deep concern about Ireland's competitiveness against the background of the highest inflation rate in Europe and the rising value of the euro and concluded that "neither Government of the traditional kind, nor social partnership, as it currently exists, is capable of meeting the key challenges" facing Ireland. These are unanimous findings about the Government after six years in office from the Government's own advisers. What has gone wrong?

The underlying reasons for this colossal public service management failure can be found in a little-read report by PA Consulting which was presented to the Taoiseach a little over a year ago. It dealt with the implementation by him of the White Paper, Delivering Better Government, which I had initiated. We must remember that the purpose of that paper was to deliver value for the people's money. It required the preparation of statements of strategy as a basis for allocating resources and monitoring results in each Government office. While statements of strategy by individual Departments and offices had indeed been prepared, PA Consulting found that there was "little evidence of a central co-ordination of Statements of Strategy" within the Cabinet.

The report states, "No attempt appears to be made to bring together the aggregate set of Statements of Strategy, to establish some coherence and integration among them, and to evaluate their alignment with the priority areas set out in the programme for government." In plainer words, the consultants found that in government there was no central co-ordination of what different Ministers were doing to ensure the more economical achievement of results. Now, after seven years of failure, this situation is to be deliberately worsened by the Minister for Finance's budgetary proposal to sprinkle Civil Service offices all over the country. This will make co-ordination, which is not taking place at present, physically even more difficult than it has been over the past seven years.

As Taoiseach, in terms of delivering better government, I stressed the need to manage properly issues affecting two or more Departments, the so-called cross-cutting issues to which Deputies Richard Bruton and Burton referred earlier. Child care and traffic are examples of cross-cutting issues where people's interests are not looked after due to the lack of co-ordination between individual agencies or fiefdoms. The problem of delivering better government was identified before Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats took office. However, the PA Consulting Group found that after six years of Government, "progress on cross-cutting issues has been disappointing with the system still struggling to find practical, collaborative mechanisms to progress the management of those issues."

With the Government six years in office, terms such as "disappointing" and the "system still struggling" stand out. These are the words of consultants paid by the Government. Consultants are inclined to tell the person who is paying them what he or she wants to hear. However, in this case, this is not what the Government would have wanted to hear. Cross-cutting issues in public service management may have been difficult to manage over the past seven years, even when all the offices to be co-ordinated are situated in the one city. These issues will now be even more difficult to co-ordinate when offices will be spread all over the country, hundred of miles away from one another in some cases.

From a close reading of the PA consultants' report, it becomes clear that Ministers themselves were personally to blame for this failure. The consultants had even to go so far as to recommend publicly that Ministers should join their management advisory committees to review progress and priorities at least once every two months. They had to be told publicly to turn up to their departmental offices at least every two months to meet with senior officials on management advisory committees. Obviously, some of them had never even once met their management advisory committees. That this had to be put in an official report and such a recommendation made to Ministers after six years in office, is acutely embarrassing. It shows that Ministers were not bothered enough to devote two or three hours every two months to the systematic overview of their ministerial responsibilities. They were too busy opening pubs and petrol pumps in their constituencies to devote time to the job as Ministers for which they were paid.

Mr. Connaughton

They were putting up posters.

Mr. J. Bruton

Regular attendance by Ministers at management advisory committee meetings will now be made even more difficult by the fact that some management advisory committee participants will have to be in Dublin with their Minister attending at or near the Dáil, while others will be in departmental headquarters in the regional town in which the Department is located. Finding diary time for management advisory committee meetings with Ministers present will be much difficult in the future than in the past.

If Ministers were setting such a poor example in attending management advisory committee meetings and had to be reprimanded publicly by the Taoiseach's consultants, it is not surprising that the PA consultants found there were other problems further down the line as well. The survey stated that 67% of civil servants still believe that underperformance at work is not challenged. It appears that Ministers had no interest in performing at all. The consultants also stated:

Although the principle of connecting performance by public servants and reward had been acknowledged in these [Government] documents, no concrete steps had yet been taken in this direction.

This is six years after the Government came into office. With two thirds of civil servants saying that underperformance among their colleagues was not challenged, is it any wonder that public spending has more than doubled in the last seven years. What has been happening to the people's money? Did the Government check up on how well it was spent? Did it have the know-how to do so? Did it check up on underperformance? The answer is "no".

As far as measuring value for money to customers is concerned, the PA consultants stated, "Work remains to be done in terms of assessing whether service standards and performance indicators have been established — if so, have these standards been met?" After six years in office the Government still did not know and could not tell the consultants when it spent public money, what standards of public service it was setting and, if it had such standards, whether it was achieving them. Ministers were, and remain, lost sheep without a shepherd in a fog of their own making.

In his report, the Comptroller and Auditor General said that the most basic job of evaluating how well money is being spent under the current Government, "that there is still a wide variation in evaluation capacity." Is that not a fine expression? There are some people who do not know their elbow from any other part of their anatomy as far as evaluation is concerned. The Comptroller and Auditor General reported that many Departments still have a "considerable distance to go" — another fine phrase — to integrate evaluation into decision making. In other words, to figure out whether they are making a good decision or a bad one, they still have a considerable distance to go. What is the point in evaluating anything if it does not influence decisions? Evaluation may involve cheques for consultants but if it is not integrated into decisions it is a waste.

Under the White Paper, Delivering Better Government, Departments were instructed to plan expenditure three years ahead so that long-term decisions taken now would be obvious to the Dáil and the people. The PA consultants discovered that this requirement for three year planning was being treated as a joke by all Departments, especially by the Department of Finance. The report revealed:

A prevailing view among these managers was that once a new estimates cycle [for the next year] got underway, the financial projections previously prepared and submitted for "Year Two" of the [previous year's] multi-annual cycle were essentially disregarded in favour of a new discussion ... essentially focusing on the next twelve months only.

No business or household would plan its finances on a 12-month only basis. However, the Government, led then and still, by two accountants, does. That is not a charge from an Opposition politician, but from a highly respected international consultancy firm.

PA consultants also found that, "The link between financial analysis and decision-making remains relatively weak in many Departments/Offices." Another report, also prepared by the Government, gives us an insight as to why the results achieved have been so poor. Basically, Ministers have completely failed to communicate their public service change agenda to the people charged with putting it into effect. NGM Market Research surveyed civil servants and found that 40% of respondents were not aware of any initiative under the change and modernisation programme, five years after it had been launched. How can people implement a policy of which they are unaware? The programme consisted of 18 initiatives and 40% of the Civil Service could not name even one of them. NGM Market Research also stated:

Too much communication about "Change and Modernisation" takes place in written form (e-mails, newsletters and magazines)...that civil servants want more face to face communications (information sessions, training and direct communications from immediate managers).

If the Civil Service is to be broken up geographically, with the senior managers and their Minister in Dublin while the other officials are located in headquarters in the regions, there will have to be even greater reliance on written forms of communications, e-mails and the like, and even less time for face to face communications. In other words, matters will worsen, not improve.

These official reports prepared for the Government are a devastating indictment of its public service management record over the past seven years and a testament to a dysfunctional Government. Against the background of that record, the Dáil should not delegate, as the Bill proposes, to the Government the power to license individual offices to recruit staff directly who will not be part of a unified Civil Service. Whatever chance there is of coherence in a unified public service, even under the Government, there will be much less chance of it in a disunited, desegregated Civil Service of the kind the Bill proposes to create.

Problems of this nature cannot be overcome by publishing and sending out codes of practice. If the people conducting the recruitment on a delegated basis are as aware of these codes of practice as they were of the 18 items in the Government's changed management programme, we can say the codes of practice will not be worth the paper they are written on. In any event, codes of practice are no substitute for a coherent central management system with a single ethos of service.

Inevitably, people on short-term contracts, and I assume many of these people will be on short-term contracts, will keep an eye out for their next job. This goes against the Civil Service ethos, yet it will be encouraged under the Bill. If the Government is to disaggregate recruitment and allow individual offices recruit their own staff, they can only be recruited either on the basis that they will stay in that office forever or, alternatively, that they are there on short-term contracts.

It is important to reflect on this. If a Government office somewhere in the country performs a service the Government believes it no longer wants and the staff were recruited only for that office, it will be next to impossible for the Government to close down that office for two reasons. First, the people whom it will remove because the service is being discontinued will not be part of a unified Civil Service and cannot be easily moved into other jobs in other functions. Second, the closure of an office in a rural town will be much more politically difficult than would the closure of an office in Dublin.

If, for instance, there were a major Civil Service office in Mountbellew, it would be extremely difficult for Deputy Connaughton, as Minister responsible or as a member of the Government, to agree to anything happening of that nature. This measure will mean that it will be much more difficult for offices to be closed, first, because under the Bill the people recruited will be part of an enclosed one-office service and not part of a single service and, second, an office located in some Minister's town is next to impossible to close, regardless of the strength of the argument. The existing Civil Service Commission guarantees probity and fairness and the protection of the public interest. Codes of practice will not guarantee anything. They will be no more than an elaborate hand-washing exercise.

It is important also to recognise that, in breaking up the Civil Service Commission, we are dumping on the scrap heap a reservoir of institutional memory that has been built up over generations since 1924 on how to recruit people fairly and deal with the pressures that are an inevitable part of a recruitment process. That is now to be dispersed and lost.

It is interesting that it was a Government backbencher, Deputy O'Connor, who pointed out that the cost of recruitment by the existing system, which the Government wants to dismantle, is lower, at €2,000 per job, than the cost of recruitment in most private sector recruitment entities. It is interesting that the point was made by a Government backbencher, Deputy O'Connor.

Mr. Connaughton

This could be an historic day because, if one were to take literally what the Minister proposes, that great bastion of decency, honesty and reliability that I and thousands like me for many years have believed the Civil Service Commission to be is about to be disbanded. That would be a serious failure. I do not know the reason behind it but it is a serious matter. I hope it will receive much more attention in the Chamber because it will be asked why the Government is doing this.

I will deal with the decentralisation programme shortly. I have a particular view on it. There are many aspects to decentralisation that could and should work but, in so far as this major change is concerned and if my reading of the Bill is correct, it appears it will be the responsibility of the different Departments to decide to employ their staff. It is difficult to know where the checks and balances will be in respect of fairness. Every Government which tried to do this over the years, especially the senior partner to which the Minister of State is joined, managed to ensure in whatever way that its own were appointed to prominent positions. If one is to judge by the strokes being pulled in the Minister of State's party concerning decentralisation, it would appear the flavour of that is beginning to spread through to the junior infants as well.

Mr. J. Bruton

A viral infection.

Mr. Parlon

The Deputy did not receive his fair share the previous day.

Mr. J. Bruton

There is no known cure once one contracts that disease.

Mr. Connaughton

From my knowledge as a Minister of State in a Department for five years, I take my hat off to civil servants. Such officials, especially those above a certain level, take their positions seriously and work hard. Above and beyond that, however, the most important issue, now that the Government has decided to break up the Civil Service Commission, is that, over the years, I have never heard of the Civil Service Commission rules being broken. That is an important point. There are few institutions in this State about which we can say that.

I do not know what influence the Civil Service Commission will have on the break-up of the different Departments or what is intended in the Bill in terms of the way that will work. Will the Minister of State outline when replying the type of integration civil servants can expect? Under his new scheme, if someone is employed in the Department of Agriculture and Food, for example, and he or she wants promotion and to move on, as normally happens in every civil servant's career, what is the interaction between that civil servant in the Department of Agriculture and Food and the Department of Foreign Affairs or another Department, for example? Will the Minister give an undertaking to the House that the passage which has existed over the years will remain?

What consistency will there be in recruitment by the various heads of Departments? How will that be done? I assume one of the reasons for this, as the Minister of State said, is that the Government wants to recruit relevant people when they are needed in Departments. What the Department of Foreign Affairs might want would not be what the Department of Defence wants. If staff are recruited on that basis, what will happen when they want to interact with each other as the years go by and there is a cross-over of staff? If that turns out to be the case, it will run against the concept of decentralisation because staff will be recruited on a short contract basis only. That will not appeal to most people who join the Civil Service.

We have been lucky in this State over the years to have had career Civil Servants who have performed extremely well. The Civil Service is like every other system, it is not without its faults. There is the issue of seniority versus ability, about which I have spoken on many occasions over the years, but that is not what is at stake in the Bill. It is a different matter, whether people will believe the reason the Government wants to break up the Civil Service Commission. That is the bottom line. Will they believe there is an ulterior motive behind it such as that if it is broken down into the various Departments it would be much harder for it to act as a watchdog? Would that mean that as the years go by there would not be the same degree of scrutiny and honesty as there has been for many decades in terms of the Civil Service Commission?

I find it difficult to understand the connection between this Bill and decentralisation. Irrespective of where a Department is based, I would have thought it would want to be in a position to select and employ the best possible manpower available. There is the question of what the Civil Service Commission has been doing. I did not know until I heard Deputy O'Connor refer to it that from a recruitment point of view, the commission seems to offer the best value for money. That is an unchallenged assertion. There must be some other reason for what is proposed.

Under the current system, why is it not possible to make the changes proposed within the influence of the Civil Service Commission? Why can it not continue to operate as an overarching body? Why is it necessary to break it up? Following the Second Reading of this Bill, many people will take this matter seriously and ask a question I asked earlier, namely, why is the Government doing this. A great number of people will say that it must have some ulterior motive or it would not do it.

There has been much talk and smokescreens around this issue since budget day when the decentralisation programme was announced. The Minister was present when I said that I did not have a problem with the concept of decentralisation — I never had a problem with it. However, I have three issues concerning it. If one were to talk to the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, he would say he had everything to do with it and the Minister of State had nothing to do with it. If one were in Sligo, Longford or Laoighis-Offally, the Minister of State would say he had everything to do with it and the Minister had nothing to do with it. Irrespective of which Minister was responsible for it, one would have expected that counties would have been treated fairly under the decentralisation programme. However, the Government did not do that. That will be a matter of great embarrassment to the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil organisations in the county I represent, in terms of east and west Galway. Of 10,300 relocated jobs, we got only 220 at a time when 12,000 were lost in Ballinasloe, which was not even designated as a hub town. However, there was worse than that, and I want the Minister of State to take this matter seriously.

Mr. Parlon

Is the Deputy including west Galway in that?

Mr. Connaughton

I am. That is all the jobs we got. If the Minister of State checks the figures, he will note that is all we got.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should not go into too much detail on the decentralisation programme.

Mr. Connaughton

About a year ago when the Teagasc organisation was in difficulty it was decided by, I assume, its board to sell its headquarters in Sandymount Avenue, for which it got approximately €15 million. Slightly prior to that it was decided to close the agricultural college in Athenry. Teagasc was informed that 30 of the 100 members of its staff would be transferred from the unit in Sandymount Avenue to Athenry. We understood that the other 70 members of staff of that unit were earmarked for relocation to Oakpark in Carlow. There were deliberations and negotiations between the union and Teagasc and an arrangement was arrived at on the basis of 30 members of staff of that unit transferring to Athenry.

The decentralisation programme was announced on budget day. The Minister said that under no circumstances would there be relocation expenses of any description. We discovered that Oakpark in Carlow was designated for decentralisation of Teagasc staff — there is nothing wrong with that — but there was no mention of Athenry on the decentralisation list. What status has the Teagasc decision to transfer 30 members of its staff to Athenry, given that some relocation expenses were agreed between Teagasc and the union? The Government decided not to earmark Athenry as a location for decentralisation even though it earmarked Oakpark in Carlow for the decentralisation of the other 70 members of staff to whom I referred.

To compound what was a terrible day for Galway, particularly east Galway, on foot of the announcement of the decentralisation programme on budget day, under the current set of circumstances, it is unlikely that any Teagasc staff will be transferred to Athenry. If the Government has any self-respect left, it should treat all constituencies equally. I assume Teagasc was genuine when it indicated it would agree to decentralise those jobs to Athenry. Somebody had better get to grips with this matter and ensure that happens. I hope we will not now be told that as a result of the new rules on the decentralisation of Departments, that is the reason such staff cannot be transferred to Athenry. We will not accept that argument. It is as simple as that. If the Government was able to earmark Oakpark for decentralisation, it should also have been able to earmark Athenry, but it did not do that.

People in Galway were extremely disappointed in regard to the decentralisation list. No jobs were designated for Tuam. The town was not even mentioned. I do not know what is the significance of a town being designated as a hub town.

Mr. Ring

I could say something else but I do not want to use such language in the Dáil.

Mr. F. McGrath

Say it.

Report on following remarks available at

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/committee/dail/32/committee_on_procedure_dail_eireann/reports/2004/2004-12-15_utterances-re-mr-tom-reddy_en.pdf

Mr. Ring

The Progressive Democrats are the poodles of Government and the Minister of State is the biggest poodle. The people thought they were sending in someone with a record in the IFA but he let them down. The people are waiting for him and for the Government.

On the Bill, I recently put down a parliamentary question to the Department of Social and Family Affairs. There is a person in that Department on a big salary who used to be a Fianna Fáil press secretary. I suppose he was no good for Fianna Fáil and could not do the job, so they got rid of him. They landed him into a big job in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, where the taxpayer is paying for him. When the Bill is passed one will probably find him in the Civil Service next. He will be there for life and when we come into Government in a few months that is the kind of situation we will inherit.

Mr. Parlon

The Deputy should read the legislation. That cannot happen under the Bill.

Ms Burton

That is not true. I showed the Minister of State how it is not true.

Mr. Parlon

I will show the Deputies when I respond.

Ms Burton

The Government is putting in a code of practice to deal with advisers. It is not law. A code of practice is not law.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order, please. Deputy Ring should continue but I advise him again that he should not mention anyone who could be identified by a description.

Mr. Ring

I take the Chair's advice but it is very hard not to do so because there are so many of them around. Everywhere one looks, in every corner and Department, there are programme managers, advisers and consultants. It is the fastest growing industry in the country.

I do not believe in this worrying Bill, which has been introduced in the wrong way. I do not have full confidence in what is happening and the system of appointing people to jobs should be examined. I agree with Deputy Connaughton that those who get jobs in the Civil Service should have the proper qualifications for those jobs. They should have the points, like those going to college, because for long enough we had places kept for the teacher's son and the doctor's son. We are now going to have a situation where there will be places in the Civil Service for the sons of members of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. That is what is happening with the Bill. If one supports Fianna Fáil one will be sound. If one does not get into the Civil Service because one does not have the qualifications, they will get one in the back door as an adviser or programme manager. That is wrong and it makes people disillusioned. It is like the planning process.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 4.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 22 January 2004.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 21 Jan 2004

Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Jan 2004