This is perhaps one of those rare Bills on which all of us on all sides of the House are able, at least to a limited extent, to congratulate ourselves. The Minister, I am sure, is happy in being able to bring it in and we in Fianna Fáil, of course, can feel that it is essentially in its general purpose our Bill. Deputy Colley, when he was Minister for Finance, in the course of his budget speech in 1972 said that this Bill would be brought in, that talks had to be held with the various Civil Service staff associations but that he expected that within an 18 month period it would be possible to introduce it, and so it has.
Generally speaking, I think we can all be pleased that it has come before us and is a very considerable step forward. I think it is only a step forward. It is quite clear that there are further steps that need to be taken. We have, for example, the position that while women may now stay on even when married and there are certain rather limited provisions, as Senator Robinson has pointed out, allowing married women who were forced to leave the Civil Service to come back, there is nothing to prevent the Civil Service Commission from continuing to advertise positions in the various branches of the Civil Service for men only. We are, in this Bill, eliminating section 16 (c) (ii) of the Civil Service Commissioners Act, 1956, which states that an eligible female should be unmarried or a widow. We still have paragraph (b) which says that:
The Commissioners may provide for the confining of the competition to a specified class of persons defined in such manner and by reference to such things including service in the Civil Service, sex and physical characteristics as the Commissioners think proper.
In other words, it is still open to the Commissioners to limit competition to any particular post to men only. This is quite contrary to the recommendation of the Commission on the Status of Women. In Recommendation No. 283 they state:
We recommend accordingly that the Government should in relation to employment under its control ensure that job openings are not advertised in a manner which expressly or impliedly limits them to male or female applicants except where sex is bona fide occupational qualification or where women are not permitted by law to be employed.
I think it is regrettable that the Government have not taken this opportunity to include this recommendation in the Bill.
There are one or two other things I should like to say on the Bill, which perhaps could also be said on the forthcoming discussion of the motion, but I think they relate perhaps more directly to the subject matter of this Bill. The first relates to both the semi-State bodies and the local authorities. It is obviously highly desirable that they should follow the example set in this Bill. I appreciate that the Government can say they have no control over the day-to-day affairs of the semi-state bodies and also that the local authorities to a considerable extent must be allowed to run their own affairs without interference from the Government. However, when it comes to wage increases, for example, in a particular year, clearly no Government could allow semi-State bodies and local authorities to hand out increased wages without any regard to national wage agreements or other matters of this kind. Governments, in other words, inevitably have to interfere in matters of this kind in both the semi-State bodies and the local authorities and therefore it should be made quite clear to them by the Ministers concerned that they are expected within a very limited period to follow the example set by this Bill.
To quote one very minor example, I am not sure what the position is now but certainly until very recently the Radio Telefis Éireann Symphony Orchestra and Light Orchestra, allowed married women to remain on, not, I regret to say, as a matter of principle but because it was impossible to get a sufficient number of adequately trained musicians, at least until comparatively recently, and it may still be the position. Married women, though permitted to play in the orchestras were not allowed to be established. The Government should make it quite clear that discrimination of this kind will not continue.
The other matter I should like to raise on this Bill is a very important one. I refer to a recommendation of the Status of Women Report about promotion of women in the Civil Service and the local authority service:
Interview boards formed in the Civil Service and the Local Authority service and by the Civil Service Commission and the Local Appointments Commission for a selection of staff for promotion should, where possible, be composed of both men and women.
This, I think is a very viable point because it is quite clear that, no matter what kind of legal changes may be made in a matter of this kind, women will not get equal rights unless something more is done. There is, I am afraid, in Irish male public opinion, a very considerable prejudice against employing women in the higher type of administrative jobs. We all come across it constantly. There is no doubt but that when it comes to the higher type of jobs, the better paid jobs, it is very difficult for a woman to get employment. Take, for example, Table 16 in the Report of the Commission on the Status of Women. The proportion of women in the general service grades in the Civil Service makes really remarkable reading. We find that in January, 1960, taking all the principal and higher grades of the Civil Service, 2.6 per cent of all those in these grades were women and, to make matters worse, on 1st January, 1965, this 2.6 per cent had fallen to 1.5 per cent and on 1st January, 1972, 0.6 per cent of all those in the principal higher grades were women. In the footnote the report says that on 1st January, 1972, there were only two women in this category, both at principal level. There was no woman amongst the 82 heads of Departments and deputy or assistant heads of Departments.
Since 1st of January, 1972, the position has steadily worsened each five-year period since 1960. That makes this kind of exercise ludicrous unless there is a change of view amongst the people who make the appointments. Judging by the 11 that we had nominated to the Seanad recently, one wonders whether changes of Government makes much difference.
The only ray of light—and there is, fortunately, a ray of light in this particular table—is in regard to administrative officers in the Civil Service. Whereas apparently there were no women in the grade on 1st January, 1960, there were as many as 16 per cent on 1st January, 1972, which suggests that in the lower levels of the administrative grade far more women are coming in and that possibly in the future when it comes to the higher grades there may be more women. There is a very serious problem there and I think that possibly the only way of really dealing with it all would be to insist that all interview boards for this type of position had both men and women on them.
Other than these points, this is clearly a Bill which we should welcome. It is not a complete answer but it is certainly a step on the right road.