Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 December 2023
99. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will ensure measures are taken to align the pay of Tús supervisors with CE supervisors; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [54156/23]
View answerThe question is to ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will ensure measures are taken to align the pay of Tús supervisors with CE supervisors, and if she will make a statement on the matter. I will expand the question slightly to include both Tús and RSS as I understand the negotiations took place together.
I am not sure if the Deputy was in the Chamber earlier but at risk of repeating myself, I will give the answer and we can elaborate and go a different direction with it. My Department operates a number of employment support schemes including community employment, Tús and the rural social scheme for long-term unemployed persons and low-income farmers. I acknowledge the important role played by Tús supervisors in providing valuable opportunities to participants, and in supporting the delivery of key services to local communities across the country. As Tús supervisors are employees of the individual implementing bodies, neither the Department nor the State is the employer of this group of workers. Nevertheless, recognising the valuable role they play in delivering services on behalf of the Department, departmental officials continue to hold meetings with representative associations to discuss employment related matters. As I already stated, and as part of this regular engagement, Department officials have met the union and employing companies' representative groups in connection with a claim seeking pay parity of Tús and RSS supervisors with CE supervisors. As outlined in an earlier reply, there is a difference in the supervisor roles, with CE supervisors having a key role in drawing up and supervising individual participant learning and development plans. As a consequence, we would expect the service fees paid to the service providers to reflect this difference in scope. That said, the Department, in its role as funder of the programmes is open to proposals and suggestions from the implementing bodies. It is important to note this is not a matter for determination by the Department alone, and any proposal that might be brought forward will be subject to the approval of the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and will need to stand on its own merits.
My officials continue to be available to liaise on the issue with the union and employing companies' representatives. I trust this clarifies matters for the Deputy.
I will cut to the chase. I understand there were negotiations between the unions and the Minister of State's Department, proposals were put together at official level and those proposals were then sent over to the Department of public expenditure, as all such changes inevitably must be. When were those proposals sent to the Department of public expenditure and what response came back, either in the form of a further information request, a refusal or agreement? As I said, I understand the negotiations concluded and a proposal was forwarded.
With a view to getting the best outcome for everyone, I will not get into the nitty-gritty of this. We have had two successful processes over the past couple of years in terms of securing the gratuity and the 5% increase for CE supervisors. I have put a lot of work into those two processes in the background. I have been asked questions about them, while they were in process, in this Chamber. For the benefit of those processes, I have held off on the detail. I will say that negotiations are not complete. To my knowledge, they are in an exploratory phase at the moment. An additional meeting was scheduled for November but it had to be postponed for good reasons. There was no other motive for the postponement apart from there being practical issues around availability that meant it was not viable to proceed. My understanding is that there will be an attempt to reschedule that meeting before Christmas. Once again, it may be difficult to do so for simple, practical reasons of availability.
A written reply I received on the issue of the gratuities seemed to give me a lot more information than is available here today. I cannot understand how these processes go on as long as they do. There has been a failure by successive Governments to reform the system in order to ensure there are quicker decisions. In fact, if anything, things have been getting slower and slower over my period in the House. That is a matter of concern. The answers always seem to be inevitable but the processes seem to be a lot longer and a lot more convoluted, with much less satisfaction from them as a consequence.
This is the third pay-related issue in which I have been involved. I worked to progress the previous two issues. We got the gratuity issue sorted, which was going on for a very long time. It came to my table, I progressed it and now it is done. We also had the pay claim issue and we worked through that as quickly as we could. The 5% increase has been done now, with the first part given earlier this year and the second half in November. Now this third issue is on my table. The best reassurance I can give the Deputy is that while the issue may be long-standing, it is live and active on my desk. Realistically, it will take a couple of months to address it. As I said earlier, I meet with officials on a weekly basis to discuss the RSS, Tús and CE. We will be doing so again next week. There is interest from my point of view in making sure things progress.
