Joe Higgins
Question:9. Deputy Joe Higgins asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his plans to reduce the level of temporary staffing across the public sector by converting such posts to permanent contracts. [42069/14]
View answerThursday, 6 November 2014
Questions (9)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
I wish to ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform whether he will reduce the very high level of temporary staffing across the public sector by converting such posts to permanent jobs.
I thank the Deputy for his question. In my role as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, I have overarching responsibility for recruitment to the Civil Service. All such recruitment is governed by the Public Service (Management and Recruitment) Act 2004. Under the Act, the method of appointment to a permanent Civil Service post is as a result of being successful in a competition run by the Public Appointments Service or by another licence-holder such as the head of a Department or office. Selection processes are open to all eligible applicants who meet minimum entry criteria.
In the main, vacancies in the Civil Service are filled on a permanent basis. However, temporary vacancies arise from time to time to cover such absences as maternity leave or shorter working year and where a permanent vacancy will not exist and a job needs to be done for a finite period of time. Temporary clerical officer positions in the Civil Service are filled by an annual competition conducted by PAS which is usually advertised in February of each year.
It is a matter for human resource units in all Departments and agencies to have procedures in place for dealing with the recruitment and employment of fixed-term employees and the management of their contracts. My Department issues guidelines, entitled Best Practice for the Recruitment and Management of Fixed-term Employees in the Irish Civil Service, which are revised from time to time. The most recent version issued in April 2014 and took account of changes arising as a result of the single pension scheme and the Haddington Road agreement. The guidelines can be found on my Department's website.
PeoplePoint, the Civil Service human resources and pensions shared service centre, became operational in March 2013 and brings together shared HR and pension processes and systems. There are now over 24,000 employees availing of PeoplePoint services across 20 Departments and offices. The use of contract staff for these posts was necessary to ensure that business needs were met and as a temporary response to the demands of this new service. Plans are progressing to replace those temporary clerical officers with permanent staff. In June of this year PAS advertised a recruitment competition to fill permanent clerical officer positions in the Civil Service and public service. In excess of 28,000 applications were received and the first successful applicants are now being offered appointments in line with demand to fill vacancies across the Civil Service and the public service. Decisions on the filling of posts, permanent or otherwise, in other public service bodies are a matter for the employing bodies in the context of their business needs.
There is an inordinate number of temporary contract workers in the public sector, in particular, as a consequence of the recruitment embargo and people were brought in on very short-term contracts.
These contracts were renewed one after the other and many had to resort to the courts to have the State implement the law to give them fixity of tenure. If we look at the Department of Education and Skills, we will see the matter involves 935 primary school teachers and 2,618 post-primary school teachers, not all of whom are replacing teachers on maternity leave and so on. Almost 200 staff have been employed on temporary contracts in PeoplePoint; some of whom have been in the Department for years; were promised a confined establishment competition in which they could hope to move to a permanent position and now find themselves thrown into the mix with 29,000 other applicants to join the public sector generally. This is highly unfair. They were made a promise and I would like to know what the Minister will do about it.
In general, I am far happier to have permanent appointments where there is a permanent job to be filled. That is what we are going to migrate to. We certainly had difficulties in filling positions that were needed during the time there were restrictions on recruitment. Some staff were recruited on a short-term basis. I have a difficulty. I want permanent staff in PeoplePoint, but I must allow others to apply for jobs. I cannot simply say those who have been there on a temporary basis will automatically be given all of the positions. That would not be fair to others who want to apply for them. As far as is practicable, staff can apply and will be facilitated. They will have an advantage in their applications because they already have the skills required. I am aware that there are people who have applied and have not met the recruitment criteria for the jobs being created within PeoplePoint on a permanent basis. I encourage people to keep going in order that everybody will have an equal opportunity to secure jobs, as opposed to me saying this discrete section will have precedence over all others.
Of course, we want people to have proper decent jobs in the public sector with proper pensions and conditions, but that has been made far more difficult by the fact that the Government and the previous Administration did not replace up to 30,000 public sector workers. Does the Minister not see the difficulty of staff in PeoplePoint with up to two years experience who hope to be made permanent but who might now face the dole? It is not fair to regard them as complete outsiders competing with others applying for the first time. Surely it is a matter of justice. I ask the Minister to give an assurance that the people concerned will move to permanent positions. What is the position of those with contracts of indefinite duration who as a result of threatening legal action had inferior conditions under which they were employed on temporary contracts in being made permanent?
As PeoplePoint became operational in March 2013, staff have not been there for years. I take account of the point made by the Deputy that we must have some consideration for those who are doing the job on a temporary contract, some of whom have had that contract rolled over because it is only an annual contract. I do not know whether it is the Deputy's position that they should automatically be made permanent and that people elsewhere in the Civil Service or those not employed in it but who would like to seek a clerical officer position should be excluded from applying for these jobs. On balance, we should have an open competition to fill all jobs, but those already there have an advantage inasmuch as they have a proven track record of being able to do the job. That is the better way to go.