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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Dec 1972

Vol. 73 No. 17

County Management (Amendment) Bill, 1972: Committee and Final Stages.

SECTION 1.

I move amendment No. 1:

To add to the section the following new subsections:

"(2) The Minister shall make regulations for the purposes of an appointment under subsection (1) which shall set out the method of appointment of an interview board and the qualifications for appointment, including in particular qualifications in relation to age, education and local knowledge.

(3) Where regulations are proposed to be made under subsection (2) a draft thereof shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas and such regulations shall not come into effect until a resolution approving the draft has been passed by each such House."

I do not think there is any need to go into the amendment in any great detail. The various merits and demerits of appointments either by the Local Appointments Commission, as was suggested, or by local interview boards were discussed fairly fully on Second Stage. The merits and demerits of having a straight appointment made by the county manager, without consultation or reference to any interview board, was also discussed fairly fully.

I expressed myself yesterday as being less than happy with the alternative method of referring the appointments to the Local Appointments Commission on the basis that, unless a special case was made for the appointment, the position would be open to applicants from all parts of the country and the essential qualification of local knowledge and experience would, consequently, be lost. I also expressed serious reservations about the suggested method of appointment by a county manager even after an interview board make recommendations. Some of the Members of the House would be at one with me in this having heard the Parliamentary Secretary's reply on Second Stage when he was at pains to point out that there would be no obligation upon a county manager to accept the recommendation of an interview board which was set up to interview applicants for the post. If the county manager felt that he had better knowledge of the applicants than the interview board it would be up to him to decide to appoint somebody else and that was all there would be about it. The activities, time and recommendations of the interview board would count for nothing. I do not see the merit of a system such as that and I do not think it would be an improvement on the existing method of appointment which, we are all agreed, is not a very good one and should be changed.

Because of the various undertakings and suggestions made in the course of this Bill I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary might have been anxious to write into the Bill the type of regulations which would be set out in relation to the interview board itself and in relation to the qualifications of the applicants. I had hoped that there would be imposed on the county manager an obligation to accept the recommendation of the interview board, but obviously that is not going to be the case. In addition, it is not clear that there will even be an obligation on the manager to set up an interview board in the first place.

The Bill is extremely short and the only guidelines that can be laid down under the terms of this Bill will be merely guidelines by way of circular letter from the Department. If a manager chooses not to set up an interview board but to make the appointments himself, after having carried out interviews or having made his own tests, he will be perfectly free to do so. I should like regulations to be set up which oblige the manager to appoint an interview board and to accept their recommendations. If we are all agreed that the present method of appointment is not a good one, that it needs to be changed and that the change is going to be an improvement, it should also be seen to be better. It can be made better publicly by ensuring that the interview board makes the choice and that the manager accepts that choice.

If that is not to be the case, then I think it would be of extreme importance that the members of the local authority in question and the general public should be made aware of the fact that an interview board has sat and has interviewed applicants and that the county manager has, in his wisdom, subsequently decided not to accept the board's recommendations but has decided to appoint somebody himself. That would be a very important qualification in this suggested method of appointment.

I agree with the parliamentary Secretary that some of the interviewers should be local officers of a local authority who have the individual knowledge peculiar to that administrative area. It is important that some of the interviewers should have that knowledge. Of course, it would be equally important that a number of them—I would imagine the majority of them—should be from outside the administrative area where the appointment is to be made.

I believe that all of those things should be clearly set out in statutory regulations to be made by the Minister. They could be discussed in this House and they would then become a legal onus and obligation on the county manager. Under the terms of this Bill I believe that that will not be the case: a circular letter will be issued of which the manager may or may not take cognisance. It would also be important, in view of the discussion that took place here, that the particular qualifications for the position of rate collector shall again be clearly set out in statutory regulations, so that it would become apparent to everybody what were the qualities necessary for the position. The proposed change could be made better than the present system if these suggestions were to be carried out now. It would be preferable if it was made clear to everybody that they were becoming a legal obligation as part of an Act of the Oireachtas or regulations made thereunder rather than the vague recommendations in a letter which apparently will emanate from the Department, if I understand the Parliamentary Secretary correctly.

The manager will set up the board. He will be the employer of the new appointee. It can happen that some members of the board will have no knowledge of the person. The manager will not know which of, say, 20 candidates will be placed first by the board. It can happen that Mr. E will be the No. 1 recommended by the board, but in respect of Mr. E the manager may have confidential information, for example, that this man had been convicted of embezzlement of which the board would not have any knowledge or he may have information that Mr. E was in some way not a suitable person for appointment to the position of rate collector, although recommended as No. 1 by the board. Therefore, the manager cannot be blamed if he refuses to accept that recommendation. It is only in that very exceptional type of case that the manager would be right in refusing the No. 1 recommendation of the board. This is not a matter that has cropped up very often in many of the appointments made by a county manager. Moreover, I hope it is one that will not crop up in the cases of rate collectors.

In regard to the amendment, there is nothing to prevent the appointment of a person from outside the county, and some rate collectors have already been appointed by this method. In other words, rate collectors operating at the moment for a number of years have been appointed under this particular method. I have found in respect of County Donegal that rate collectors appointed by this method are residing in the local authority area. However, it can happen that in certain appointments this will not be the case. As far as I am aware, rate collectors appointed by this method are resident in and natives of the locality to which they are appointed.

I should like to refer to the educational standards mentioned in the amendment. For rate collectors operating for some time who were appointed by this method educational qualifications are as follows:

Each candidate must possess a standard of education sufficient to enable him to keep efficiently the required books and accounts. . . .

Where duties of the office are to be performed in the Gaeltacht each candidate shall possess a competent knowledge of Irish. The actual setting up of the board is another matter covered in the amendment. Boards operating for selections for other appointments listed here are set up by the local authorities. The officers regulations will be tightened to cover this and the amended regulations in connection with the setting-up of the board can be laid before the House. I think that covers some of the points raised.

In relation to this amendment, and particularly in relation to the Parliamentary Secretary's concluding remarks on the Second Stage, it is not incumbent on the manager to accept the recommendations of the appointment board that he has set up. If that is the case the position will be no better than the appointment of rate collectors is at present. A situation might arise whereby an appointments board will sit down and interview 12, 15 or 20 candidates and appoint A, B, C, as 1, 2, and 3 in the order of preference and submit them to the manager, or perhaps recommend one to the manager. The manager's hands might be tied in this because if the manager——

If I might interrupt for a moment, I agree with the Senator, but what happens if the board recommends a person who subsequently fails the health test?

That is a different thing altogether.

It is one of the things I had in mind.

It has happened many times where a person was qualified in every way and recommended for the job and perhaps got the job but failed the medical test. This is understandable. However, it is the exception. If a job is advertised and there are 20 applicants for it, they should be screened before their names go before that interview board because it would be wrong if there was a situation where it leaked out from the interview board that C had qualified at the top of that list but A or D is then appointed. Questions will be asked and the manager will find himself under pressure and the same suspicions will be aroused after that appointment as there are at the moment. We are not curing this problem, we are leaving it wide open. A system should be devised whereby the manager must, subject to health requirements, accept the recommendation of the board.

May I deal with that? I would not accept the suggestion that any number of applicants should be screened on factors which are not going to be dealt with by the board. The board will deal with educational suitability and suitability of manner, experience and so on. There are other factors which must be brought into consideration such as health, honesty and so on with which the board will have nothing to do but which the manager, as the custodian of the local authority purse and interests, must have regard to.

The Minister said—

Once a board make a recommendation, and it is only a recommendation, after having interviewed or examined applicants under the existing system and under the system that I am proposing the manager still has to get satisfactory evidence as to the health of the person being recommended and also has to make discreet inquiries as to character in order to ensure that he is not appointing, as a rate collector, a person who has a criminal record or some blot on his character which would be an obstacle to his appointment to a position of such responsibility which involves handling funds.

This is the same point I tried to get across. There will be a recommendation by the board only on what they are asked to recommend. They are not asked to recommend on health, honesty or other necessary factors which could make the person, although suitable from an educational and personality point of view and from the point of view of his knowledge of his local area, a dead loss in other respects. The manager must protect the local authority purse and the local authority ratepayers.

In relation to the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, if A is appointed by the local Appointments Commission and the county manager is notified, what does the county manager do if he has some information of which the Local Appointments Commission are not aware?

I understand that the Local Appointments Commissioners clear the health record and the character record of the person as well as doing what the manager's board will do. The manager's board will do one job but over and above that the Local Appointments Commissioners clear the health and character record as well.

I have been associated, as a public representative, with four county managers in this county—Donegal, Sligo/Leitrim, Kerry and the new county manager for Meath. I am convinced that if the leaders of the three political parties were to go on their knees in front of any one of those men and ask him to make an appointment that was not recommended by an interview board he would not do so. From my experience of them their integrity could not be questioned and I am satisfied that the same applies to every other county manager in this country.

As the Parliamentary Secretary has stated, problems can arise. Information can be received at the last moment which would necessitate the manager altering the recommendation of the interview board. If this were to arise the manager should immediately contact that interview board and explain the position to them. I put it to Senator Fitzgerald if he were a county secretary in Meath and was invited to Mayo to sit on an interview board for the appointment of a rate collector, if that board recommended Mr. X and a few weeks later Senator Fitzgerald as county secretary read in the newspapers that Mr. Y was appointed, I should imagine that he and the rest of the board would demand an explanation from that county manager. If he failed to get it he would make it known publicly that the recommended person did not receive the appointment.

Any local government official who sat on the board and who felt an injustice was committed would either publicly expose it or, through his own local government officials' association, take the necessary steps to have the matter rectified. No official will stand by and allow an injustice of this kind to take place. There may be occasions when information received at the last moment, of which I do not wish to give examples, would cause hardship to certain families. We all know of appointments which should not have been made for this reason by interview boards. The system proposed in this Bill has been practised for many years in the appointment of urban rate collectors. There were two such appointments made in my own town. The interview board made the recommendation and the county manager made the appointment.

Surely the Local Appointments Commission are bound by secrecy in this regard, and likewise any body appointed by the county manager will have the same secrecy obligation attached to them. Once such a body have made a recommendation the body cease from that moment to have any existence. There is no question of the county manager communicating with that board when he receives the recommendation from them. A good deal of unease would be overcome if there was a regulation by which a county manager, if he did not accept the recommendation of the committee set up to advise him, would have to give his reasons to the Minister and get his agreement to appoint whoever he wished.

I thought we were keeping the Minister out of so many things and now the Senator is dragging him in.

It is far too arbitrary to leave information which may be casual to come to the knowledge of the county manager and this possibility may enable the county manager to alter the decision of the board without anyone being aware of his reasons for doing so. This is almost getting back to the old system. There should be a cross-check with the Minister on this.

It is not necessary that the Bill should be changed to do this. The Senator's suggestion is reasonable. The House will agree there can be cases where the manager will find it impossible to agree due to private or confidential information which he has verified and found to be true. Senator McGlinchey suggested it could be got over by informing the board but this is not the best way of doing it. I would accept Senator Quinlan's suggestion that in such cases where the manager for good reason, having checked his information, would notify the Minister. The manager must notify the Department that he is not accepting the No. 1 recommendation.

Accepting that the candidate has the qualifications both medically and educationally, as applies in my own county or the county from which the Parliamentary Secretary comes from, or County Cork which one would describe as a big rambling county, could it be possible for the county manager to have authority from the Department that the candidate would be picked from that electoral division? A rate collector from the locality would know the people in the area and would be aware of cases of hardship.

When the Parliamentary Secretary stated the type of educational qualification one needed, I heard a snort from the Fine Gael benches. I should like to ask them what qualifications do they think one needs to have? It is not necessary to have a university degree. There are some well qualified uneducated people. If there are six candidates who apply, could the county manager ensure that the man from the local electoral division would get priority in that instance? This would make the collection of rates more personal and there are hardships existing which the local man would know about. This applies particularly to the larger counties.

We could not confine it so drastically as that. Actually we cannot confine it at all. The best we can hope for is that, having an official of the local authority to which the appointment is being made on the board, he would know the qualifications of the applicant, point out these things and get them across to the other members of the board. This is the only way the point could be met. I cannot undertake to do it by amendment of the legislation before us.

It is now 1 o'clock. Does the House intend to continue business or adjourn for lunch?

I neglected to say I was not accepting these amendments and I hope that what I have said is sufficient to meet the points put forward in the amendments.

Just one query. When the Parliamentary Secretary said he accepted the suggestion that the county manager, should he be dissatisfied, may get the Minister's agreement, does that mean he will have to convey the reasons for his dissatisfaction to the Department?

I am afraid the Chair has drawn our attention to the fact that it is now 1 o'clock.

I should have thought it would be simpler for us to finish now. I have grave reservations about the discussion that has gone on for the last five minutes and I wish to put my views on record. We ought to be able to finish within ten minutes or so.

It is a matter for the House.

We could sit on to finish the debate provided it is understood we do not take too long.

Is it intended to finish all the business?

Provided the Leader of the House does not instruct the Parliamentary Secretary not to reply.

I do not obstruct at all. Senators must realise it is now lunch time and we are facilitating them by sitting on.

"Instruct" was the word I used. I have grave reservations regarding Senator Quinlan's suggestion. It may not happen. The suggestion has been made that because a county manager is so often in contact with the Custom House in relation to various matters, strong representations could be made to him in relation to individual applicants. Various people in the Custom House might think these people were the best qualified. The manager might decide that was the special information which he had and the interview board did not. It would be ludicrous to say that, if a manager decides not to accept his interview board's recommendation, he has to explain the reason to the Minister. If the Minister agrees with him, everything is all right. It would be a funny sort of a manager and application form and a beauty of an interview board who would manage to come up with a convicted embezzler, to quote the example given by the Parliamentary Secretary, as their recommendation for the position of rate collector. I cannot see why the decision of the interview board could not be binding and why they could not investigate the health and other qualifications of applicants in the same way as the LAC. The Parliamentary Secretary referred to the regulations under the Act of 1955. Did he say amendments will be made to these regulations which will be binding statutory regulations in relation to the setting up of interview boards for these appointments?

On that point, there are directions for the setting up of interview boards. These will be amended. Any amendments to the regulations made will be laid before the House. The usual procedure will be followed. If any member of the Oireachtas objects or thinks the regulations unsuitable he can bring the matter before the Oireachtas by way of motion.

Is the amendment withdrawn?

Amendment put and declared lost.
Sections 1 and 2 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment and received for final consideration.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Just one final point on which I feel we ought to close this debate: will the situation now clearly obtain that the well respected and understood words "canvassing will disqualify" will apply?

I do not see what anybody has got against canvassing. All the politicians do it.

Question put and agreed to.
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