Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 30 Nov 2021

Vol. 1014 No. 7

Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (Amendment) Bill 2021: Second Stage

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (Deputy Michael McGrath)

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

The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission came into existence on 1 January 2004 under the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Act 2003. This founding commission legislation then led, in summary, to two consequences; one, that the commission became the sanctioning authority for expenditure and for deciding on staff numbers up to the grade of principal officer and the provision of services and related matters to the Oireachtas; and, two, that the system for the allocation of budgets to the Oireachtas changed from the annual Civil Service Estimates and Vote procedure to a different process involving a three-year budget from the central fund.

The new budget is set every three years following negotiations between my Department and the commission. The budget is approved at political level by the commission and the amending legislation is then passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas. Under the terms of the inaugural commission Act, a three-year budget covering the period 2004 to 2006 was provided for the commission. Further Acts were enacted in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015 and in 2018. A new Oireachtas commission Act is now required as a matter of priority as the financing provided under the 2018 Act expires as of 31 December coming.

As all of the Members will be aware, the commission oversees the provision of services to the Houses and their Members by the Houses of the Oireachtas Service, the parliamentary administration, in accordance with the commission Acts. The primary functions of the commission are to provide for the running of the Houses of the Oireachtas, to act as governing body of the service, to consider and determine policy on this service and to oversee the implementation of that policy by the Secretary General.

The commission is not responsible for the management and day-to-day operations of the Houses. The Secretary General has overall responsibility for these functions in accordance with the commission Acts. It is important to note that the commission does not set the level of remuneration payable to Deputies and Senators. Responsibility for salaries, pensions and allowances for Members is conferred on me in my role as the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

The commission is accountable to the Parliament and presents annual reports of its work to both Houses, together with estimates and accounts of its expenditure.

I would like to acknowledge at this point the hugely valuable role played by secretarial, parliamentary and administrative assistants, in supporting Members and delivering a high-quality service to the Oireachtas. As a Member of this House for more than 14 years, I am acutely conscious of the extraordinary work that all of our staff do, day in and day out.

The scheme for secretarial assistance is the mechanism under which secretarial assistants and others are engaged. Under the scheme, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has the power to regulate the provision of secretarial facilities to Members and to qualifying parties. Secretarial assistants, administrative assistants, parliamentary assistants, administrators and chefs de cabinet are employed by Members and by qualifying parties but are paid by the commission. The commission also regulates the number of staff employed under the scheme and has oversight of the operation of the scheme. Under the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Act 2003, the commission must obtain the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform of the day before reaching an agreement with any person on rates of pay, conditions of employment or superannuation rights.

In practice, this means that the commission advises on matters relating to resourcing, grading and terms and conditions of employment, and submits proposals to myself for consideration and agreement. In that regard, I am aware that there is a process under way at the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, dealing with various issues, including alignment with the current public service pay agreement: Building Momentum - A New Public Service Agreement 2021-2022, between the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission and SIPTU. I look forward to a successful resolution of the matter and an early presentation of proposals for my agreement.

The Houses of the Oireachtas Service is the public service body that administers the Houses of the Oireachtas on behalf of the commission as the governing authority. The functions of the service are set out in legislation and can be broadly summarised as the provision of professional advice and support services to the commission, the Houses and their committees, and Members of the Houses.

To serve the people of our country, we need a modern, fit-for-purpose, well-resourced parliamentary system and I believe the allocation over the next three years provided for in this legislation supports that aim. The sole purpose of this Bill is to make available the funding for the commission over the coming three years. The Bill proposes to make available to the commission a sum not exceeding €462.505 million to carry out its functions for the three-year period from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024. This sum has been agreed between the commission and my own Department and takes into account foreseen expenditure over the three-year period. The figure of €462.505 million over three years comprises €160.7 million in 2022, €150.8 million in 2023 and €151 million in 2024.

This represents a €40.2 million, or 9.5%, increase on the allocation for 2019 to 2021. Within the overall envelope of €462.5 million, it should be noted that pay and pensions comprise €323.4 million, or 70%, of the overall budget allocation. Members' allowances total €37.9 million, or 8%, of the overall budget allocation, while non-pay expenditure amounts to €101.3 million, or 22%.

Ireland has a very proud parliamentary tradition and a large portion of the extra funding that has been provided is for an ongoing programme of parliamentary reform, which I fully support. Chief among these reforms is an enhanced role for the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO. Building on initiatives in other countries, such as the Congressional Budget Office in the United States, the PBO was put in place to provide independent and impartial budgetary and economic analysis for all parliamentarians in the Oireachtas. Further Oireachtas reforms include the development of the Private Members' Bills policy unit with the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA. Based on my own experience, I acknowledge the crucial role that office plays in supporting the work of Members of the Oireachtas. Without such an office, it is hard to see how the Oireachtas would function on a day-to-day basis. OPLA's main objective is to provide independent legal advice to members of the Oireachtas and Oireachtas committees. It also assists Members with research, development of policy proposals, drafting of Bills and amendments and pre-Committee Stage scrutiny. Extra funding is also being provided to cater for the larger number of Oireachtas committees and the associated staffing requirements that follow. Committees provide a critical avenue for scrutiny of Government and Government policy and it is altogether right and proper that they should be funded to fulfil this important role. While these measures will result in increased staffing and administration costs, I believe they represent a very welcome commitment to the further enhancement of our parliamentary democracy.

Other elements in the new funding envelope include the provision for financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, pay restoration measures. I am pleased that the allocation for the period 2022 to 2024 will include provision for a significant investment in ICT infrastructure as part of the ongoing Oireachtas digital transformation programme. In total, €22.8 million has been set aside for this purpose over the next three years. We have all experienced at first hand the importance of modern methods of communications in the 21 months or so since the pandemic arrived on our shores. It is to the credit of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission that the ongoing work of Deputies and Senators was supported during the periods in which our physical presence was severely curtailed. The digital transformation programme, through the funding provided for in this legislation, will provide technology in the Chambers that will implement long-term solutions to facilitate collaboration and productive workflows, digitise existing processes and ways of working and provide modern tools to support Members and staff when carrying our parliamentary activities, implement advanced technology to enhance the research and analysis capabilities within the Oireachtas and improve transparency between the Oireachtas and the general public.

It should be noted that a once-off general election allocation of €10.5 million has also been provided for in the overall envelope, although we are not, of course, expecting a general election within the three-year period for which this budget is being provided.

While funding is the sole purpose of the Bill, a number of amendments of a technical nature are also required. I will refer briefly to the details of these amendments. Section 1 amends section 5 of the principal Act to provide funding for expenditure incurred by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission during the period of three years from 1 January 2022. The amount of funding for that period is capped, as I said, at €462.505 million. Section 2 is a standard form provision setting out the Short Title, collective citation and commencement date for the Bill. I look forward to the debate and I commend the Bill to the House.

Deputy Sorca Clarke

Before I begin, I want to assure colleagues that I do not have Covid. I have something that predates Covid, which I believe is called the common cold.

Various measures have now, rightly, been enacted to increase the pay of public service workers. They followed on from the cuts that were made in the wake of the previous financial crisis. Many public service workers remember only too well the impact of those harsh cuts, imposed by way of the FEMPI legislation. Those cuts have now been undone and the new public service stability agreement was broadly welcomed by public service workers and voted for overwhelmingly by the union membership. Even groups such as the section 39 organisations, the employees of which are not technically public service workers but work in sectors dependent on public funding, recently got a deal. However, there is a group of workers who have been left behind. They are very close to home, so close that some of them may be working in the Minister's constituency office in Cork. They certainly are working for members of his party in the Seanad. I am talking about Oireachtas parliamentary assistants, secretarial assistants and constituency secretarial assistants. Political staff are not technically public service workers as they are employed by Members, but their human resources management is overseen by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Minister's Department, is responsible for their pay, terms and conditions. Although these workers were not part of the FEMPI process, their pay, terms and conditions were very badly impacted, with pay freezes, reduced overtime and the removal of recognition of previous experience and qualifications. They agreed to accept these changes as, like their co-workers in the public service, they believed they needed to be done in the public interest. They also did so in order to maintain their link with the public service. That has not been honoured because the Department believes the link has been broken. As a result, a secretarial assistant today may be earning below the living wage. Secretarial assistants start at €24,423 per annum, which equates to €11.75 an hour. I hardly need to remind the Minister that the living wage is €12.90 an hour.

In 2015, the moratorium on pay increases was theoretically lifted. The then Minister even made an announcement to that effect, but the Department never signed off on it. In 2017, when talks around pay restoration were picking up pace, the unions raised the issue again. In 2018, it was forced to lodge a pay claim with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. SIPTU lodged the claim on behalf of secretarial assistants, which called for the introduction of a parliamentary assistant role in the Seanad and a compression of the secretarial assistant scale in order that staff would be rewarded for the essential work they do in the Oireachtas. It asked that prior service and qualifications be recognised once again. In 2019, the Seanad passed a motion calling on the Minister to meet with staff and union representatives as a matter of urgency. No such meeting has ever taken place.

We are about to enter 2022 and the time for meetings has long passed. The staff want to see action from the Minister immediately. The offer he made to secretarial assistants this year, of a pay increase of 1% in October, 1% in February and a further 1%, was derisory. It would bring their salary to €25,162 per annum, or €12.09 per hour, which is still below the living wage. It was a slap in the face to the people who are doing the constituency work of the Minister and his fellow Fianna Fáil Deputies. It was a slap in the face to the people who are working extremely hard for his party's Senators. How on earth he has not seen fit to reach a fair deal with these workers is absolutely beyond me.

Turning to the Bill, I am happy to support the amendments, which have achieved cross-party support. That is welcome. I understand a member of the Government has even signed off on them. If enacted, the amendments will be an improvement on the status quo but they do not go far enough in some respects. It is not in the remit of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, nor should it be, to set anyone's wages. There are separate mechanisms for wage-setting and we must not interfere with them. Nevertheless, the amendments seek to move secretarial assistants onto a parliamentary assistant pay scale. As my colleague, Senator Gavan, said in the Seanad, we all know the title of secretarial assistant is a misnomer.

These people do the same jobs as parliamentary assistants, but are paid dramatically less. We believe that consideration should certainly be given to appropriately benchmarking the grade of secretarial assistant, but it should be based on job evaluation.

We also think that pay for secretarial assistants in constituency offices needs to be addressed. These people are working at the coal face. They work in the Minister's constituency office. He should thank them for their efforts in getting him elected. They are the ones who follow up with councils, help constituents deal with housing issues, make representations on his behalf and are the face of his constituency service.

No staff member should earn less than a living wage. Political staff deserve a fair pay deal, bringing all staff up to at least the living wage. It would cost less than the €81,000 increase the Minister recently gave to the Secretary General of the Department of Health. As a Deputy, the Minister's salary is more than €100,000 per year. He also receives a ministerial salary in excess of €80,000 on top of his salary as a Deputy. He gets lavish expenses, yet if he tried to recruit a new secretarial assistant tomorrow, he or she would earn just €11.75 an hour. How can he justify that? He certainly cannot justify it on the basis of fiscal prudence. There is nothing fiscally prudent about failing to enact the amendments to the Bill. The costs would be minor, but the change would have a significant impact on the lives of political staff. Enacting the amendments would cost approximately €2 million. Let us put that in context. Since it was announced that the national children's hospital had received planning approval, it has cost approximately €1.9 billion. That works out at €950,000 per day or close to €1 million a day. Between now and Thursday, the cost of the children's hospital would be about the same as the cost of enacting these amendments. Let us remember that only recently €81 million was blown on faulty ventilators that were never put to use. With that money, we could have enacted these amendments 40 times over.

The inflation rate is running at in excess of 5%, a 14-year high. We have the highest rents in the EU. The Government is facilitating a build-to-rent housing market for which people need an average salary between €50,000 and €60,000. The cost of living is spiralling. None of this would be affordable for Oireachtas staff members.

I do not know how the Minister looks his constituency staff in the eye. I know many Government Deputies are embarrassed by this situation, but like the others who have gone before them they hide behind the, "If it was up to me, I would give it to you" line. In some ways, they are correct. They have a point, because it is not up to them; it is up to the Minister. He holds the purse strings, power and authority. He is the only one standing in the way of these workers getting what they deserve for the valuable work they do.

Deputy Michael McGrath

None of that is true.

Deputy Sorca Clarke

The truth hurts, but it is true.

Deputy Michael McGrath

We can talk about it during the week.

Deputy Sorca Clarke

Will the Minister support these amendments or does he want to be the Scrooge at Christmas for these staff?

Deputy Michael McGrath

Get off the high horse.

Deputy Sorca Clarke

Does the Minister want to be the Grinch that helps to steal Christmas? There is never a wrong time to do the right thing. The time to do the right thing is now.

Deputy Martin Kenny

We welcome the Bill, which is long overdue. We will support its main thrust. I understand some quarters put a spin on this, but the reality is that it is about workers' rights and it is a workers' rights issue.

Legislators, as Members of the House, are responsible for many things. One of the things for which we are responsible is workers' rights. We have to stand up for the staff we employ, because if we do not do that, who will? At the end of the day, the secretarial assistants working in our staff and constituency offices around the country are at the coal face of everything we do. Everyone acknowledges and understands that. They deal with, for example, people who are upset because a husband has been diagnosed with cancer, and they are trying and failing to get a medical card because they are being put through all kinds of hoops by the relevant Department. Secretarial assistants in constituency offices are those who make the phone calls, send the emails and stay late in the evening to try to sort through the issue and get all of the documentation together to help and coach people through the process.

In my constituency, they deal with farmers who have difficulties and cannot get grants, whose payments are late and who are in trouble with banks and loans. They deal with myriad situations that nobody could imagine. As well as being the people who send emails, make representations, write notes down and click "Send" on computers, they are counsellors because they are dealing with people on a daily basis. The fact that they are so poorly remunerated is one of many scandals in politics.

The cost of living has gone through the roof in this country. People who are working hard and trying to manage on salaries that are quite low are finding it difficult because they have nothing to fall back on. They find it difficult to pay rent, meet mortgage payments, pay car loans, get their children through school and do all of the things they have to do to try to manage life. It is a real struggle for people. If these amendments are accepted and implemented, we can change things for secretarial assistants.

This Bill goes some way towards righting the wrongs of the FEMPI legislation introduced by a previous Government, which punished public servants for something that, in reality, they had nothing to do with. Secretarial and parliamentary assistants had their wages cut and frozen due to that legislation, and none of their previous experience or education was taken into account. As the Minister knows, a secretarial assistant earns a starting salary of €24,423 per year, which equates to approximately €11.75 per hour. That is well below the living wage of €12.90 per hour. Many are earning such low salaries that they qualify for family income support or supplement, which is happening in other workplaces in the public and private sector all over the country. Many Deputies will wring their hands, and say there is nothing we can do about this and it is out of our control. This is something we can control. The Minister needs to resolve this issue.

The fact that SIPTU had to lodge a pay claim at the WRC says it all in respect of where we are at. Since my election in 2020, I have handed back three pay increases, as did many other Deputies. That reflects the reality of the situation. I am paid well enough for this job. I am privileged to represent the constituency I represent. The staff who work in constituency and parliamentary offices are also privileged to represent constituents and do the work they do. They are delighted to do the work, and want and are eager to do it, and it is a scandal that they are so poorly paid. They enjoy their work. They find it rewarding that they can make a difference to people's lives, as all of us in politics do. People, even in local politics, have always found that, more than anything else, is the reward we get for this job. When somebody comes into the office in a difficult situation, it may take a week, a fortnight or a month but we are able to help that person and make a big difference to his or her life as they move forward. I think it was Bill Clinton who said, "Money isn't everything, but it is up there with oxygen." That is true, but at the same time there are things money cannot buy, such as the sense of self-achievement and self-worth we get from helping somebody. I know secretarial and parliamentary assistants also get that, and that is something we all need to acknowledge, but their remuneration needs to change.

People in offices around the country are working on low wages. We need to recognise that. We also need to recognise that while money is not everything, it is an awful lot if one does not have enough of it. It is a big problem for very many people out there who do not have enough money and are struggling to get by. There is no point telling them not to go out for lunch and instead bring sandwiches to work. That is some people's answer to this problem. That is not the answer. The answer is to pay people properly. I implore the Minister to support the amendments and ensure that the Bill makes a difference for those people who do very hard work and make such a positive difference to so many people in constituency offices up and down the country.

Deputy Thomas Gould

It is vital when discussing the pay bill for the staff of the Oireachtas that we give recognition to the secretarial assistants working in our offices who have been fighting for fair pay since 2017. I will take a minute to talk about my secretarial assistant, Mr. Ken Weldon, who works in my office. Ken manages my office and organises my clinic. He deals with patience, kindness and empathy with every person who calls to, emails or telephones the office. He is the front line of my office and the first point of contact for many of my constituents. There are days when Ken supports people in very distressed situations. He hears dozens of stories daily of people whose lives are being destroyed by the housing crisis, the cost of living or the crisis in children's disability services. I have no doubt there are people like Ken in constituency offices throughout the State, people who turn up every day with empathy and passion and who go above and beyond their job title to support people who are struggling.

We are expecting people to do these jobs, jobs that are difficult both mentally and emotionally and which require skill and in-depth knowledge of numerous Departments and local authority departments, but we are not even paying them the living wage. Ken and all the other SAs are working tirelessly in offices and helping people at the lowest points in their lives. However, when the secretarial assistants and their unions were ready to engage at the Workplace Relations Commission in a meaningful discussion about their poor pay, representatives of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform could not be bothered to turn up. To be clear, we should have a living wage. A living wage is not a massive sum. It is the bare minimum somebody can earn and live on. It is not a luxury wage. It is not like the hundreds of thousands of euro that are paid by the Government to some people, such as the heads of the HSE and aides employed by the Minister and his Government colleagues. It is the bare minimum a person can earn to ensure he or she can pay the bills and the rent and go to bed at night without worrying.

I believe the Government is completely out of touch with ordinary people. It cannot imagine what it is like to live on a living wage, not to mind the people who have to live on a wage that is lower. One need look no further than the Minister, Deputy O'Brien's plans for affordable housing. Like me, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform is a Corkman. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, believes affordable housing in Cork could be a maximum of €400,000. That is €400,000 for an affordable house. This goes to the heart of why this Government is completely out of touch with ordinary people. If you are on the living wage of €12.90 per hour, that amounts to €26,832 per annum. To afford the Minister's affordable houses in Cork, you would have to be earning €102,857. It is no wonder Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are so reluctant to discuss the living wage. They are out of touch with the reality that ordinary people have to face. Does the Government understand the vast majority of people in the State are not earning €100,000 so they can buy an affordable house? Affordable homes in Dublin will potentially cost more than that.

The secretarial assistants deserve to be treated equally. There are also people who are struggling to buy an affordable house. At the end of the day, surely to God the Minister will personally recognise that the minimum we should pay people is a living wage. I believe that and Sinn Féin believes it. That is why we believe the people who work for us deserve at least that as a minimum.

Deputy Ged Nash

I am pleased we are having this debate. It is more than timely. To the best of my recollection, although I have not checked the transcripts of the debate on the previous Bill, we did not have this conversation three years ago. That is unfortunate. It is a conversation we should have had in this Chamber, but it appears we did not. The fact we are doing so now is illustrative of the degree of frustration our secretarial assistant colleagues are experiencing at present and have been experiencing over the past couple of years.

We talk a great deal, both inside and outside this Chamber, about the concept of a living wage. If we are serious about the introduction of a living wage and transforming the minimum wage to a living wage, the Government must lead by example. The truth is there has not been a real discussion at Government level about the prospect of a living wage since 2015, when I established a Government forum on the living wage. A few months later, as soon as the good people of Louth in their wisdom gave me their direction, by a small margin in the election of February 2016, that they no longer required my services, the next Government simply stopped talking about it. We know the living wage is an ambition of the programme for Government, but I will believe that when I see it. I say that because when a government treats its employees and those whom it is responsible for paying in this way, we must question its commitment to transform the national minimum wage that is paid to a significant number - tens of thousands - of private sector workers. We must ask if it is serious about introducing a living wage in this country.

It would cost a very small amount of money to ensure every public sector worker and those who are paid out of public sector funds would be on the living wage. Remember that the living wage rate is considered to be a reasonable amount of money on an hourly basis that a single person would require to live some type of moderate existence. It is not extravagant but a moderate, basic level of existence. I ask the Minister to reflect on that. By the way, I have some sympathy for the Minister in terms of the demands made on him or his officials to meet the staff who are affected. It seems that given how this is organised and given his consent is required to sign off on anything, that would make things legally difficult for the Minister. I understand and appreciate that, but he could send a political signal that he wants to see a system introduced that is fair for the secretarial assistants. I genuinely believe that is something the Minister wants to see. I know he is committed to public service. While we all may disagree politically and have different philosophical, ideological and economic views, I appeal to the Minister to send a political message that he wants this matter resolved in the interests of those on whom we depend in our offices each day to provide the service we are elected to deliver.

This Bill is fundamentally about enabling this Legislature to run and to be run well. I am glad the Minister put on the record at the outset his gratitude to staff, here and across the public service, who worked so hard in the very challenging circumstances of the pandemic to respond to the demands that were placed on this House and to ensure the House could continue to operate. I put my thanks and gratitude on the record to the staff who made that happen and allowed us to fulfil our democratic mandate, because people have been looking to us for leadership. Regardless of political mistakes and so forth that may have been made in the management of the pandemic, we in this House all united and were enabled to meet when things were very difficult for this country. We hope we will not see the difficulties experienced over the past two years resurface.

This place has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. My first full-time job after college was working here as a secretarial assistant in 1998.

I know I look far too young to have worked as a secretarial assistant back in 1998. Deputy Shortall, who has joined us, will remember that a Member could only rely on one staff member at that stage. That staff member was a secretarial assistant who would have fulfilled several different roles until the role of the parliamentary assistant came along. That was an addition Deputies at the time very much welcomed and a resource we all use well.

I was reflecting earlier that back in 1998 I first came into these Houses as an employee of a Labour Party Deputy, Derek McDowell, who happened to be the party spokesperson on finance. Little did I know that quite some years later I would be fulfilling that function myself. It is interesting how things move on and evolve. In 1998, we were just starting to use email. Fax was as high-tech as it got. I am afraid we are still using Lotus Notes, something the House should look at and scrutinise much more carefully. As I said, there was one staff member Deputies could rely on and that staff member had to fulfil a range of different roles.

That secretarial assistant role has evolved dramatically over the past 20 years or so. The pressures placed on secretarial assistants now are enormous compared with the moderate kind of pressure I experienced in my day-to-day work as a secretarial assistant back in the late 1990s. The job description alone is a complete anachronism. It conjures up images of someone who takes dictation, writes letters, works nine to five Monday to Friday and that is the end of it. They are much more than that. They are the essential cogs and keep a Deputy's service going.

Often, they are the first person a constituent speaks to when they phone or call into an office. Their work is far from being merely clerical or administrative. They are an advocate and an expert in getting things done, as we know. They are real experts on public administration, entitlements, services and so on. However, for some time they have been treated extremely shabbily. The ironic thing is they are being treated very shabbily by those of us who really should know better. Their rates of pay, their conditions and the basic levels of workplace respect and dignity afforded to our colleagues, the secretarial assistants, bears little relationship to the real value they bring to their job and to the service they provide to the people who elect us.

It shames these Houses that this work and those who do it so expertly are taken for granted. I think they have been taken for granted by the system. It is almost as if the system has decided there is a premium for working in politics. So many people want to work in politics and get that experience that they seem to be required to take a hit for the first few years of their career and hope they get a better paid job as a parliamentary assistant or as an adviser, or that job in the political party might come along. That is part of the thinking and part of the culture. It is wrong and needs to change.

Having served as a Senator in recent years I have seen how the role has changed. The role of secretarial assistant for a Senator is very different from that of a secretarial assistant for a Deputy. There is a world of difference and a fair system needs to be devised take account of that difference in the context of the resources to be allocated under the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission Bill we are discussing this evening.

My union, SIPTU, has been actively engaged on this issue in recent years. I pay tribute to my Labour Party colleagues, Chloe Manahan and Ellen Murphy, who have worked tirelessly as union representatives to try to resolve this issue and to advance this just cause. Other representatives who work with all political parties are engaged in this process. A pay claim was lodged in 2018 when I was a Senator. That was designed to compress the secretarial assistant scale for Dáil staff and to introduce a parliamentary-assistant-related scale for Seanad secretarial assistants. A derisory offer was made to secretarial assistants in recent times and I can entirely understand why that was rejected.

I am not a negotiator and I am always conscious we make remarks in this Chamber in the context of a negotiation that is ongoing. This is not me instructing anybody what to do but we need to get real and set appropriate pay scales for secretarial assistants. We need to be much more transparent on that. Rather than the existing 18-point pay scale could secretarial assistants not be moved to a much more appropriate scale like, for example, the executive officer, higher scale that would start at €34,000 and move up to about €56,000 with fewer increments along the way? It takes 18 increments for a secretarial assistant to get to the top of their scale. Given the rates of pay at the moment, it is most unlikely any secretarial assistant will be in position long enough to be able to get to the top of the scale; why would they?

While I understand the Minister cannot engage in industrial relations negotiations, which would be inappropriate, I appeal to him to send a political signal here this evening that he supports the work our secretarial assistants do. I know he does, but I would like him to make a political intervention and appeal for this to be resolved in the best interests of the secretarial assistants who work so hard with us, who represent our operations so well and are much more than the description "secretarial assistant" could ever really define.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

I am pleased to be able to talk about this important Bill, which covers the entire running of this House. I would like to address two things. The pay scales of the secretarial assistants go from €24,223 to €46,888. There is a difference of something like €16,500 between their pay scale and that of parliamentary assistants at the bottom of the scale. After 18 years, the gap is closed but that is a very long time to have served as secretarial assistant. As the Minister knows, this is precarious employment because many secretarial assistants only last in the job as long as we last. As we have seen in the recent election, the turnover in this House is quite dramatic.

I would make a general point. I believe the gap between the low paid in the public service and the top paid has widened in real terms since the 1960s, and that has been retrograde in society.

The work of our secretarial assistants is not the same as the work of somebody working in a big office as a clerical officer. Our secretarial assistants have unique features. They are doing a public-facing job. They have a major work burden. They need to multitask and know about many schemes in the public domain at any one time. When they are working in the constituency office and we are up here, they are virtually working on their own on their own self-initiative. They cannot ring the Member about everything.

A job analysis of what they do would find they are atypical workers with very unusual work conditions and, as I said, their work is quite precarious because it only lasts as long as the people who are elected last. That issue needs to be addressed urgently. I am not sure how the mechanisms work. Ultimately, the Minister must provide the money. He needs to give a clear signal that if money is awarded, it will be there and will be paid. The Oireachtas, as a collective, needs to look at the issue of people like this who are so crucial to the operation of democracy in this country.

A second matter has not yet been addressed by anybody here. It is a parallel question as to whether we are resourcing ourselves properly to do the work the public wants us to do and whether we respect democracy enough to believe our work is vital and we must be resourced to do it properly. There has been mention of years as far back as 1998 but I first came to these Houses as a Senator in 1989. We had one secretarial assistant in those days between three Senators but the world was so different. There were no emails and everything came by post, so everybody had to complete an onerous task of typing or writing a letter. There were virtually no mobile phones and although there was an odd brick-type phone, constituents did not have them in their pockets. They did not expect instant contact and there was very little media to be done in those days.

The procedures of this House were totally different, as was the amount of paperwork. The complications from consultations were different, as was the amount of research we must do. The roles then and now are worlds apart. People have spoken about the change between 1920 and 1950 but the changes in the 30 years since 1989 have been just as dramatic when analysed. We must go with such changes to do justice to the job. We did not have pre-legislative scrutiny at the time or all the committees in which we now spend so much time preparing reports and doing detailed work, etc.

It amuses me at times to look at what the public thinks we have and what we really have. I often have people contacting me and asking that I have a member of staff look at the diary before reverting. My staff are so crazily busy that the staff member dealing with the diary is me. If I do not do it, my staff must do it and if that happens, they cannot be doing something else for me. It is a question of how the labour is divided. The reality is we have two staff who are entitled to holidays and breaks. They sometimes get sick and so on. The idea that we have a bevy of staff, with one for the diary, one for constituency work and one preparing us for Parliament is not true. We all know it is not that way but we are shy or afraid of saying it because certain sections of the media might not like it. Such sections of the media purposefully do not want to understand the importance of democracy. We must be fearless and do something about it.

This always reminds me of something that happened many years ago when a lady rang my constituency office to complain that I was effectively getting paid to get re-elected; in other words, that the people working in my constituency office were helping me to be re-elected. I noticed the number was from Dublin because in those days people rang on landlines. I rang her back, and she was giving out about my constituency office. I said, "By the way, you rang my constituency office." She said, "Yes", and I said, "You did expect the phone to be answered even though you weren't even in my constituency." She said, "Yes", and then she suddenly realised that she had put her two feet in it and she started laughing.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

She was not the only one.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

She was not the only one, because people rang from all over the country. All of us, collectively, serve constituents who are all the people of the State and we owe it to them to provide a good service. My belief is the ordinary plain people of Ireland want us resourced to do the job.

I suggest those of us who engage in committees and put much time and effort into them in these Houses should be given more support staff. It is time-consuming work. I know in saying that I will be criticised by people who do not wish to understand the workload, not only on us but on our staff. Collectively and without any petty politics, we should make a stand for democracy in this House. We should do it fearlessly.

Deputy Róisín Shortall

The Bill before us seeks to increase the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission funding from €422.27 million to €462.505 million, an increase of more than €40 million, which is a vast amount of money. It is not exactly clear what the purpose of the increase is but we are told there is a plan to employ 111 additional staff over the next three-year period. All of this would happen while secretarial assistants continue to be denied a living wage. There is no doubt some money should have been set aside to address the matter of low pay in the case of secretarial assistants. There is a very strong case and amendments to be tabled about increasing funding further to provide for the additional funding required to address the question of the pay of secretarial assistants.

As others have said, the starting salary for secretarial assistants is €24,423.37, or the equivalent of €11.75 per hour. This is clearly well below the living wage of €12.90 per hour. In the programme for Government, in the general sense there was a commitment to progress to a living wage over the lifetime of the Government, and in January the Tánaiste asked the Low Pay Commission to examine this programme for Government commitment and make recommendations. Its report was expected in the second half of this year and I do not know if it is still coming. What is the status of that report? There is no doubt low-paid staff within the Oireachtas and across society are struggling to make ends meet. People on low pay and below the living wage are finding it particularly difficult. Many people in all kinds of circumstances are finding it difficult now because of the increased costs of living, but people below the living wage are really put to the pin of their collars. They are struggling very badly.

A survey carried out by the Houses of the Oireachtas human resources section during the previous Dáil indicates many secretarial assistants are doing similar work to parliamentary assistants. There is no doubt about that. We expect them to do all kinds of work and be experts across a wide of range of areas. We expect them to know about social welfare and healthcare entitlements. We expect them to know about housing and to be able to deal with a full spectrum of queries. They must work really hard to create that knowledge base and develop that expertise. The person in question must really be very bright and well-informed as well as being very empathetic. These are all characteristics that do not come easily. It is all very challenging. Nonetheless, secretarial assistants are paid significantly less than the parliamentary assistants. Much of the work of parliamentary assistants and secretarial assistants is very similar, especially in the case of the Seanad, but secretarial assistants are paid much less. Their salary is not much more than 50% of the parliamentary assistant salary, and that is not fair.

The survey indicates secretarial assistants were regularly carrying out higher level parliamentary assistant tasks. There is no doubt that is the case, certainly with the secretarial assistants allocated to Senators. In many ways it is the same for Deputies as it is not just the case the secretarial assistant just does what would be termed secretarial work. They must deal with a broad range of matters as well as researching, writing documents and dealing with the public face to face, which is one of the most challenging aspects of their work.

For example, according to the survey, 45% of Dáil secretarial assistants were writing newsletters and managing allowances, including Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, returns. That is an entire other area of compliance they complete on behalf of the Member in question. Again, it is challenging and they must get the figures right and be very clear about compliance requirements. It is very responsible work.

From these survey findings, it is clear the current secretarial assistant pay scale does not in any way accurately reflect the roles and responsibilities undertaken. Everybody should be entitled to equal pay for equal work but this is certainly not the case when it comes to political staff in the Seanad. One of the most glaring disparities in the Oireachtas is the difference between secretarial assistants in the Dáil and in the Seanad.

Debate adjourned.