It is reasonable to ask, in relation to any legislation which is proposed to be enacted, what is the mischief which the legislation is designed to cure. It is not unreasonable in the case of a Bill such as this to ask two questions relative to it. Firstly, and I hope the Minister will not misunderstand me, there was a somewhat casual reference in his introductory speech to abuses and grounds justifying the legislation. I should have thought that, before we enact legislation which will add further to the cost of administering the affairs of this country, we would have had published some analysis by somebody competent to carry it out, telling us what the mischief is, its extent, its duration, whether it is getting worse or getting better. I do not find myself informed on this. I have had assistance from any of the Departments of State with which I dealt. I have had assistance from the Minister's own Department in relation to everything that has been published concerning this, but I have not found anywhere any account of the abuses which the Bill is, presumably, designed to cure, to curb and to eliminate.
The Minister in his speech referred to an important matter, as also did Senator Owens. That is the International Labour Organisation Convention No. 96. The Minister went on to say:
We are one of the few countries in Europe which have not ratified it so far, but the provisions of this Bill should enable us to do so.
I initiated a search for this when I first heard of this Bill and when I first heard of the existence of the Convention of the International Labour Office and did finally get it. The Convention was revised in 1949, came into force, in effect, in 1951 and has not yet been enacted here.
This is a confession of ignorance on my part, but the Minister should do us the service of telling us what is the background thinking to this Convention. The Convention is very strongly worded in its general directive against employment agencies. For example, the Minister has not chosen to tell us if, when this Convention is to be enacted by this member country, we are going to accept the provisions of Part 2, which provides for the progressive abolition of fee-charging employment agencies conducted with a view to profit; or the provisions of Part 3, which provides for the regulation of fee-charging employment agencies, including agencies conducted with a view to profit. Perhaps this is implied in the terms of the Bill, but I should have preferred more expressed and more explicit declaration of Government policy on this. I do not like seeing us as a dog hungry for meat and taking any bit of a bone that is thrown at us from Europe. I should like to know the background thinking to this.
I do not think that this Convention has been ratified by the United Kingdom. In many ways our circumstances are more similar to the United Kingdom than they are to many other countries in Europe. We should be circulated with the basis for the thinking behind the Convention and we should be able to make up our own minds as to whether it is justifiable. I am not saying that I would not finally conclude that the Convention should be adopted or that it should not be adopted in the manner proposed by the Minister. However, I should like to know if on the Continent of Europe they have not got abuses of a kind that we have here, or if they have abuses we have not.
I am going to be critical of some of the provisions of the Bill. I should like to make my own position clear on it by saying that I think there is some mischief here and there is a justification for legislation with regard to this. The employment agency field does give scope for abuse and it is a field in which people can be exploited. This is particularly true where the recruitment is for persons in this country for employment in another. We appear to be far behind the United Kingdom in relation to this particular issue. In what is now a broken up country council—London—there have been in existence regulations for employment agencies since 22nd November, 1921. These were made under the London County Council General Powers Act, 1921.
It might be useful to the House if I read out bye-laws 11 and 12, which are contained in this scheme:
An agent shall not propose or arrange for the employment abroad of any female person under the age of 18 years without first obtaining the sanction in writing of her parents or lawful guardian and unless he has satisfied himself that suitable arrangements have been made for the welfare of such person during the continuance of such employment and for her return to this country on the conclusion of such employment and that such employment is legal in the country in which the employment is to take place; and on making an engagement with such person he shall furnish to her free of cost a written document containing the provisions of this bye-law and stating that such provisions have been complied with; and he shall keep on the premises the written sanction of the parents or guardian for a period of 12 months from the date of the making of the engagement and shall, when required, produce such written sanction to any inspector or duly authorised officer of the council. The agent shall in any particular case, if so required by the council, furnish the council with full particulars of the arrangements.
Regulation bye-law No. 12 states, and be it noted that this applies in every case, whether it be a female person under the age of 18 years or not:
An agent shall, in every case in which he arranges for the employment abroad of any person or of the employment in this country of any person resident abroad, furnish such person free of charge with a copy of the contract, or other document showing the terms and conditions of such employment drawn up in a language understood by such person and he shall keep a copy of such contract or other document on the premises for a period of 12 months from the date thereof and shall, when required, produce such copy, contract or other document to any inspector or duly authorised officer of the council.
These seem to be bye-laws which I could, very happily, accept as part of our statute law. The bye-laws were originally made in 1921 and subsequently revised. I do not know if these particular ones were made in 1921 or were subsequent amendments. Some provision equivalent therefor to section 8, subsection (2) (i) would be welcomed. I would prefer if we had in this the English habit of spelling out what the law is rather than the Irish habit, which is developing, of the Minister taking power to tell us later on what the law is going to be, without our knowing yet what the law is going to be and without having been given any opportunity, other than the slight opportunity of annulling the order, of discussing the matter.
It is a slight opportunity. Could the Chair tell the House when an order made by a Minister of State was annulled and what use is the debate about the annulment of an order? This is the time to have the debate. Now is the time for the Minister to declare to us what is in his mind. If provisions of the type I read out— not that language but any language he cares, perhaps something adapted to our own circumstances—were proposed to us, I, for one, would not object. This is one field in which there is possibility of abuse. All countries appear to recognise this. It is strongly set forth in the Convention which, the Minister tells us, it is proposed to adopt. There is a long and terrible history connected with employment for abroad, about which we all know. Apparently, we have been dependent on the provisions of the Health Act, 1907, to protect people concerned.
Another kind of abuse is clear and that is that accommodation may not be adequate, and may be very undesirable. The London bye-laws relating to this go into the matter in a detail which would be embarrassing to the House and I shall not dwell on it. Apart from the question of whether it is desirable to have provisions such as they have with regard to sleeping accommodation, I should like to know what are the deficiencies in our Offices Act. Forgive me, but I am unable to produce the name of the statute. There is a statute which has been applied to myself, so I know that it exists. I am referring to the type of people who come in and say whether in the accommodation we are providing there is enough space for any given employee, whether a simple amendment of the offices Act would not deal with this question of accommodation.
I also think, just to concede another point in favour of this measure, that it may be desirable to require the licensing of persons who charge fees to employees. Anyone who charges fees to employees is putting himself into a category in which, in my view, the State ought to intervene to protect such a person engaged in such a business. As to the rest, those who are not engaging in making arrangements for employment abroad or being engaged in such know exactly what they have to comply with, that is to say, that they have got to give a copy of the contract to the applicant and keep a copy of the contract available for inspection and see that it is translated and that the terms are truly and well known to the individual. I think all of that is reasonable and I would be in favour of it.
Despite the provisions which I note the Minister is proposing in the Bill to have for exemption, I am a little disturbed to note the language which he uses with regard to exemption. The Bill is not going to apply to anybody on the State level. There is power to exclude any particular class of employment agency. I find the words used here very worrying indeed.
It is intended to use this provision to exclude agencies conducted by charitable and other bodies which do not charge fees for their services or which only charge such amounts as may cover their expenses.
If that is the limited intent of the Minister, all I can say is that I think that the overall effect of this Bill, if enacted, will be bad. I agree there are persons requiring to be curbed. I agree there are persons requiring to be protected. I agree there are situations in which the State should have every right to intervene and to intervene effectively. But you can cast a net so wide that you can catch persons who, in fact, are providing a very useful service. I hope we will find the Minister as ready to listen to suggestions for amendments as we have found one of his colleagues today—and indeed, I must say, on many other days recently others of his colleagues. I am going to suggest to the Minister that he ought to re-examine the provisions with regard to exemption. First of all, I do not think it should be limited only to these extremely worthy charitable bodies that he has in mind to exempt. It should also be extended to other people, other persons who are rendering very useful services to this country and to this economy.
Before I go into some discussion about the kind of persons who will be affected by this, may I say that I think that, where there are provisions for exemption, as there are provisions for exemption, there should be the like sort of provisions with regard to the revocation of exemption as there are provisions with regard to appeals in connection with the licences.
The Minister, I am sure, is well aware of the Bill which was introduced in 1966 in the British House of Commons by Hugh Jenkins "The Employment Agencies (Regulation) Bill" to regulate fee charging employment agencies and which was, so far as it went, what I would describe as a socialist measure and yet does not go as far as this Bill goes in relation to the powers taken by the State. Many matters are, if I may say so, more expressly set forth in that Bill than are set forth in the Bill before the House. I would invite the Minister to consider the provisions of that Bill which was never enacted. I think the Minister if he does exempt, as I think he should exempt, should not be free to exempt without giving appropriate notice to the persons exempted of his intention to exempt or to withdraw the exemption and that he should specify the reasons for his intention to withdraw the exemption. He should give the exempted person an opportunity of appealing against his decision to the court just as under similar Bills we have recently been discussing there are rights of appeal which are necessary for the protection of people in the conduct of their business.
There are a number of very distinguished, very expert and professional firms engaged here in consultancy business. In addition to those who are industrial or management consultants, there are a number of the larger firms of accountants who give great service to their country and great service to their clients—and through giving good service to their clients give good service to the economy—who have management selection divisions and all of whom will now require to look for exemption, or if not, be subject to the provisions with regard to inspection contained in this Bill.
The most important thing I want to say about this Bill is this. It cannot come as a surprise for me to present the proposition to this House that Dublin is not London. There is a very distinguished citizen of Dublin holding an august position, constantly in the news, generally in an unfavourable light who is recorded as having once said to someone, who reported it to me: "Dublin is a tricky little city". Dublin is a tricky little city and, if you tell three people, you have told about 96 people before you have gone home that evening. The confidential nature of the information received by people who are engaged in the business of getting suitable employees for companies looking for them is the absolute rock on which their business is built.
These professional firms and these consultants—many of them, may I say, are only engaged in management selection as part of the service which they are rendering the companies where they are clients—find it essential to make the most elaborate arrangements to preserve the confidential nature of the information they receive.
May I say how very serious it is that this right to inspect files should be given, and we seem to be giving it here. I am going to present the view to the House that it is, of course, of prime importance that we should be producing skills. That is of the first importance, but next in importance to the production of skills is the distribution of skills—to see that the right people are in the right jobs. Therefore, anything which impedes getting the right man into the right job is a bad measure. If the position is, as I understand it to be, that in relation to top jobs in this city and in this country, senior civil servants and high ranking employees of semi-State companies are sometimes in a preponderance in the applications for the positions, we are creating an impediment to the mobility of skilled labour which is very bad for the economy. One thing on which Marxists and the defenders of the capitalist economy are agreed on is that the production of wealth is essentially a matter of the organisation of men. The Marxists' claim is that this can only be done by direction from the top along the complicated nature of the Marxist theory. The capitalists say that the best way of organising labour is through the free operation of the market. I suggest that if we protect those who are seeking employment abroad, if we protect the young and give these other protections which we think should be given, we can let the market determine what is the best way of getting the skill into the appropriate jobs. The ones who are not any good will be found out soon enough and those who are good will progress and improve their position.
A person in the Civil Service or in a semi-State body must not let his colleagues know that he is unhappy in his job and is thinking of moving elsewhere. There may be people, not present among the personnel of the Department of Labour, but some future members thereof, who would be very interested to know what their colleagues were doing and their inspectors might be very interested to know. There is one thing that most Irishmen will not risk and that is their existing position for the chance of getting a better one, or their improvement and progress therein and the confidence of their employers in them. If an employer hears that an employee is looking for another job he is the one the employer is the least enthusiastic about from that moment on. All the plans for the organisation of that business from then on are based on the proposition that he may go at any time unless some major deal is done with him.
In looking at the higher executive jobs upon which the performance of a whole company depends it is essential that the right man gets into the right job. If the House will permit me to continue on this line, a personal history sheet must be filled in by an applicant for one of these jobs. Following on this personal history sheet he has perhaps two interviews in which he goes into his family background and any difficulties or marital problems there may be. He is subjected to psychological and other tests, the interpretations of which might be very embarrassing and the interpretations of which he might not even know are being made. These are recorded under the present arrangement by the people who have their reputation to protect because it is in their business interests to have it so and for no other reason.
If I understand this Bill rightly they are being capable of being disclosed. It is not sufficient to be told that this is the situation already in operation in London. London is not Dublin; it is a much bigger place than Dublin. Has anybody ever walked through a London street and noticed anybody looking at him? Has anybody ever walked through St. Stephen's Green without everyone looking at him and without him looking at everyone because he is expecting to meet two or three of his friends before getting from one corner to another? Nobody in London ever expects to see anybody whom he knows so therefore he does not bother to look. It is important to remember that London is not like Dublin and that Irishmen are not British people. Irish people have a long history of painful unemployment and inability to get jobs and are very shy about disclosing their ambitions. We have all had the history of concealing from our landlords any improvements we carry out because the rent would go up. If anybody thinks that this information can be procured it is a very dangerous thing. A higher civil servant in a Department who is looking for a job in, say, Aer Lingus, will think the information will be known to his colleagues in the Department through the reports of the inspectors. Despite the high reputation of service I do not see how this will be removed or eliminated. I do not believe it will be.
The techniques applied in discovering who is right for what job were developed during the last war when tasks of very great moment had to be performed by some people and they could not take the risk that a person might not have the adequate ability for it. These are the techniques which are now being used by the companies, the quality professional firms, to which I have referred.
If this Bill is enacted we will find that there will be a falling off in applications to these bodies and as a result a decline in the quality of the service given to the companies who are looking for a particular person. Everyone accepts that an engineer or an accountant is a professional man but it must be agreed that nowadays there are new kinds of professions in existence which are rendering very important services. This business of the quality of performance always precedes the elaboration of regulations and rules as to what is a quality performance in the profession itself. Good practice precedes rules providing for good practice and the good practice of the successful professional people who are engaged in this operation preceded the regulation of their affairs in any way.
Before they know what sort of person they are to look for they must decide for what sort of organisation he is required, what is its existing structure, what procedure is there in it for reaching decisions, how frustrating will it be for a particularly talented young man to go into a place where the decision making process is bad? They want to know the reason for the appointment. Here is a point at which service is very often rendered to the employee. One of the revelations that develops with these people is that, where they find a high turnover of staff in particular companies, they begin to realise that the flaw lies with the employer. They protect a particular employee and see that he does not go to the employment being offered by such a person.
They also must know the exact responsibilities that the employee is going to have. They will also want to know, for his sake, and to be able to tell him what will be his expectations of promotion. This business of mobility of labour, by the way, is very important because, not merely is it a good thing for the employer to get the employee, but very often it is a good thing for the employee to get out of existing employment and to get to the right employer. The employer may find—and this is one of the skills which is in fact developed by these people—that a certain person is capable of far more productive work than he is being asked to do in the job he has at the moment. At the end of this type of consideration they have got to specify what the job is and then, in the end, the service may be one which is rendered to an employer and it may not even consist of getting an employee for him because they may discover, within his own organisation, someone who should get promoted to the job that has to be filled. They have to develop interviewing techniques. This very often means that they bring in knowledge of the particular trade to supplement their ordinary routines to be quite sure that the person concerned has the kind of knowledge or experience which is right for it. I have had some experience of this myself. I have looked in certain instances for someone to fill a job and nobody paid any attention to my advertisement, because I did not know how to word the damn thing. But then I asked somebody who did and he worded it in a completely different way and we got the person we wanted. In this business, therefore, there is a matter of having skill in drafting the advertisement to look for the people you require. There is another job they do, that is, they counsel managers on how to handle people. Foreign managers very often coming in here need to be counselled on how to manage Irish people and this is a service which is being rendered by people who are carrying on employment agencies—not necessarily as the prime part of their job but as one of their jobs, as part of their general job of advising an industry or an industrialist or someone engaging in commerce.
Another type of skill which they require is a knowledge about what is the price for the job, what is to be given by way of salary. I find it very hard to understand what they are saying to me about fringe benefits, profit-sharing schemes and so on. But an employment agency of the kind I am speaking of has a kind of skill which is completely different from that which is offered by certain other employment agencies. The Minister should express himself in the Bill in a way in which I think he has in his opening speech. He should express himself firmly in the Bill, in a manner in which Jenkins proposed to express himself in a Bill that did not get enacted. "The powers to make regulations"—section 5 of Jenkins—"conferred by the two preceding sections shall include power to make different regulations as respect different classes of employment agency or as respect the same classes of agency in different circumstances." There is a full and complete recognition in that Bill of the point I am making about the different quality of the service.
I also think that the Minister may have received complaints about excessive charges. We read in the paper that people are awarded certain sums for doing certain services and everybody is shocked at the figures they see. But, of course, this may be totally to mislead the reality of the reward because the fee that may be awarded is to cover all sorts of different outlays and the maintenance of an organisation of a highly expensive kind during a time when they may not be earning fees of that kind. Therefore I suggest to the Minister that his advisers are not likely to be anything other than shocked if they are told that someone is paid £500 to get an employee at £4,000 per annum, or something of that kind. They will regard this as a grossly excessive fee but they will not understand the nature of the service which the company in question has rendered for that £500.
I am unhappy about the provision with regard to the control of fees. I would understand the provision with regard to the notification of fees as this would keep the Minister informed, but any question of demonstrating what the fee or scale was for a particular instance would be entirely wrong and I agree with the views expressed in a document which everybody in the Seanad, including the Minister I imagine, has received on this particular point.
On the matter of regulations regarding the conduct of the agencies, I concede that there should be some obligations assuming you have bodies that are not going to be exempt. If these bodies are not to be exempt, it is wrong, but if they are not to be exempt the matter of the confidential nature of the information they receive during the period of their exemption—if it is an exemption—must be looked at very closely indeed by the Minister. It is interesting to note that the Jenkins Bill provided in a much more limited way. It simply required persons holding licences under the preceding section to keep books, cards or forms showing the business conducted by the agency and prescribed the form of such books and the entries to be made in them. All that is not too bad but I would prefer if the Minister would open his mind to a general exemption of a much more extensive character than that he has indicated. I would say that the question that I might properly put to the Minister is this: can modern Ireland, dependent so much on the proper organisation of industry for its future success, afford to be without an efficient system of getting executives of the highest quality into the positions of the greatest responsibility?
