Amendment No. 10 is out of order.
SECTION 7.
Chairman, I want to discuss that with you.
The amendment cannot be moved and, consequently, you cannot discuss an amendment which is not before the committee.
I appreciate that, Chairman, but it has been adjudged out of order because it involves a potential charge on the Revenue. In the new section 7 (6) of amendment No. 10, I included deliberately the words "if any" after the words "remuneration" and "allowances" on the basis that the advice available to me was that this would get over the difficulty of the amendment putting a potential charge on the Revenue. If there is a charge, I suggest it is surely incidental. Perhaps I can re-enter a similar amendment on Report Stage.
I hope the Minister supports the thrust of what I was trying to achieve in the amendment. I do not accept that what the VHI has proposed is transparent or independent of the VHI. It is trying to act as judge and jury in its own cause. It is important that there be a complaints commission or user's commission, which is not only independent but is seen to be independent, to which people could apply when they feel their cases are not being heard by the VHI.
As Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn stated, a proposed advisory council is being established by the VHI but there is also a VHI arbitration system and there is an insurance ombudsman. The combination of the activities of the three should be sufficient to meet the needs expressed. I will look at the concept involved in the amendment, which was ruled out of order, between now and Report Stage and I will report again then.
Amendment No. 10 not moved.
I move amendment No. 11:
In page 7, to delete lines 41 to 44 and substitute "extant.".
The difficulty here is similar to the one which arose when the Irish Financial Services Centre was established. A number of financial organisations in the IFSC successfully poached senior civil servants, in particular, from the Department of Finance because they were able to offer experienced senior people considerably greater salaries, remuneration and expenses than they could ever hope to get in the Civil Service. In order to get over that difficulty at the time, the NTMA was set up. In order to avoid staff being poached, the inclusion of my amendment to the section would create the exact section which is in the National Treasury Management Agency Act, 1990.
There is or will be a real threat to the VHI when and if either Irish companies or outside companies get involved in the health insurance market here. Some of them might well be inclined to poach staff from the VHI. That would be to the detriment of the VHI. Since such experienced people, who would be, and continue to be, of great benefit to the VHI, would be offered considerably more remuneration and expenses from an outside company, there would be a real threat of them being poached. I recommend the deletion of the latter part of section 7 in accordance with what happened at the time the NTMA was set up in order to avoid that difficulty.
(Limerick East): The Department of Finance is strongly in favour of the provision of the section, and advised it is now a standard provision in legislation on commercial State bodies. Such legislative control is contained in the Acts governing Irish Steel Holdings Limited, Coillte Teoranta, Irish National Petroleum Company Limited, Bord na Móna, Bord Gáis Éireann, An Post, Telecom Éireann, the Irish Aviation Authority and the Irish Horseracing Authority. It is a policy of the Department of Finance to deal similarly with other commercial State bodies in future, and this has been communicated by it to the Committee of Public Accounts.
The VHI states that this measure should not be applied to it because it does not receive any public funds. However, Bord Gáis Éireann and INPC do not receive any money from the State either, and An Post and Telecom Éireann only receive money relating to the pension arrangements of former civil servants who transferred at the time they were established. Indeed, the State has, in the past, imposed levies on these two companies.
Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn said that no such restriction applied to the National Treasury Management Agency. We made inquiries and it has been ascertained that the agency's personnel are on individual contracts of relatively short duration, rather than the long-term employment enjoyed by VHI staff. Consequently, I am not in a position to accept the amendment.
Poaching, as Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn terms it, is a normal commercial activity. Any company is entitled to seek to employ people from another company. It goes on all the time, and the VHI should not be exempt in this regard. If it wants to act on a level playing field as a commercial organisation, this is one of the consequences it will have to accept. In any event, there has been a major change of staff there of late. Nearly all the senior people have gone, so presumably those recently recruited, who would be in a majority, know the circumstances and terms on which they are recruited.
The biggest argument against what the Minister is proposing concerns his advice on the role of honour of companies to whom this provision applies. Most of them would not strike one as commercial successes. However, I do not believe that they are mostly failures because of this section. The reasons go deeper. Competitive recruitment is normal. One cannot take steps to forbid it, nor is it wise to do so.
I agree with Deputy O'Malley. If one has to trade commercially, then the market includes the labour market. If a situation arises in future where the VHI cannot adequately remunerate key personnel or key skills, it would be possible to have contract arrangements for the very small number of key staff to which this would apply. However, it does not justify removing the generality of staff from the normal controls which the Department of Finance would seek to impose.
I accept the points made by the Minister. When the Minister agrees with the comments made by Deputy O'Malley, is he also agreeing with his comments on State boards?
I share the views of many Deputies that if we had a more efficient commercial State service it would help everybody.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Section 7 agreed to.