Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 31 May 1939

Vol. 76 No. 3

Vote 5—Office of the Minister for Finance.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £50,120 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1940, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí, Oifig an Aire Airgeadais maraon le hOifig an Phághmháistir Ghenerálta.

That a sum not exceeding £50,120 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1940, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Finance, including the Paymaster-General's Office.

Mr. Norton

On this Estimate I would like to call the attention of the Minister to a matter which perhaps he might be able to have remedied. There is a substantial number of persons employed by the Revenue Commissioners as temporary Preventive Officers. I take it we can discuss the administration of the Department on this Estimate instead of on the next one, as they are of the one group?

Mr. MacEntee

It does not matter to me. I do not mind.

An Ceann Comhairle

The two may be taken together if so desired.

Mr. Norton

I shall not refer to it, Sir, on the next Estimate. A number of these persons have been employed for quite a considerable time, and from the point of view of the duration of their employment they have really passed out of the position of being temporary preventive officers and are, in fact, permanently employed as preventive officers. I quite understand that in the early days of the imposition of tariffs and the possibility of revision of the tariff policy, it is not possible always to estimate staff requirements accurately, but where you have a tariff policy in operation for a substantial number of years, and where there is necessity to continue the employment of those people for a long period of years, I think some efforts should be made by the Department to provide these officers with an opportunity of securing established appointments. I think the Minister will acknowledge that he has been very faithfully served by officers of that class. They perform very onerous and exacting duties, and they render very valuable service to the State by their diligence and competence in the assessment of duty on dutiable goods coming into the country. They perform these duties under very onerous conditions, sometimes necessitating very long hours of attendance. They perform duties at outlying stations where all social amenities are denied to them. But apart from these hardships, they suffer from the overriding consideration that their present rates of wages as temporary officers are low. They have no pension rights whatever, and are deprived of many of the privileges which are usually associated with established status in the Civil Service. It may not be possible for the Minister at this stage to indicate his intentions with respect to them, but I would be glad if the Minister would look into the matter with a view to seeing whether an opportunity could be provided for these officers to secure established appointments.

I would like to make this plea to the Minister, that it is not fair to ask persons of 35, 40 and 45 years of age to undergo a purely literary examination, because a long period of absence from school militates against a person's chance of success in a literary examination. They have qualifications for doing their present duties. They have shown themselves to be thoroughly proficient in the performance of those duties. If the Minister would undertake to endeavour to provide them with established appointments after a test of their actual work I think the officers would appreciate that treatment by the Minister and it would help to compensate them for the hardship and inconvenience which have been associated with a long period of temporary employment at low rates of wages, without many rights which go with established status.

Mr. Davin

I desire to support the plea put forward by Deputy Norton. As I think the Minister knows, I can talk on this matter from some personal knowledge of some of the officers concerned, who work at the Dún Laoghaire and the Dublin ports. I am sure the Minister does not want to continue to be unfair in a matter of this kind, but I suggest that it is quite unfair to have two sets of men employed at the same job at the same time under different conditions of service. They work on different rates of payment for Sunday duty although doing exactly the same work. The rate of pay for the temporary men is, in my opinion, too low. I think it is dangerous, from the point of view of the public interest, to have temporary or permanent men employed in positions of this kind at unduly low rates of wages or salary, as the case may be. I believe the Minister and his predecessor have considered this matter before. I believe that, as a result of the consideration that has been given to it on previous occasions, some of the men employed temporarily up to a certain time passed through a limited competitive examination. I make the point, and make it with knowledge, that the men who are in temporary employment to-day at places like Dún Laoghaire and Dublin, are men who, in the opinion of their senior officers, are as competent to do the work as any of the established officers; and that is the real test in a case of this kind.

Men who are in a temporary capacity feel a certain amount of uncertainty: some of them are married, with families. I suggest that a wage of less than £3 per week for married men with families is an unduly low wage, considering the positions of trust which they occupy. Fully understanding the position of these people, I appeal to the Minister to wipe out the present system of temporary employment in the case of men who are highly efficient and have them made established and put on the same basis as their colleagues who are doing similar work at higher rates of pay.

General Mulcahy

I would like to get some more information from the Minister for Finance as regards his attitude to members of the Civil Service who join the Volunteer force. The answers to questions to-day seem to imply that the members of the Civil Service—whether established or unestablished—who wish to join the Volunteer force were not going to be given accommodation to do the preliminary period of 90 days training that the House has been told is essential for the proper setting up of the Volunteer force. There have been many statements made, appeals to employers, talks on the radio and platform addresses to the effect that the Taoiseach and the members of the Executive Council are astonished at the poorness of the response to the recruiting for the Volunteers, in view of the type of appeal that was made to the country and to the House as to the necessity of forming a Volunteer force on these lines.

If the necessity for the Volunteer force is such as has been suggested here by the Executive Council, then if anybody should show a headline in giving facilities to their staffs to take part in the necessary training in order to become efficient members, it ought to be the Executive Council—more particularly so in view of the way in which Civil Service staffs have been so swollen in the last few years. The Minister for Finance practically implied to-day that no arrangements were going to be made to release from the Civil Service either established or unestablished officers for the purpose of getting their first essential 90 days training. I think the Minister cannot complain of other employees in private firms hesitating to come forward to join the Volunteer force, or of employers being reluctant to facilitate them to do so, until they get some kind of a more direct lead from the Executive Council in the matter. Therefore, I think the Minister should, as far as he is in a position to do so, let us have more information as to what exactly the attitude of the Minister for Finance and the Ministerial heads of other Departments is to those members of the staff who may wish to join the Volunteer force.

Mr. Cosgrave

A comparison of the customs duties collected in the years 1931-32 and 1937-38, excluding from it those items which are taxed—for example, beer, sugar, hydrocarbon oil, brandy, Geneva rum and other sorts of spirits, sugar, molasses, glucose, saccharine, varieties of tea and tobacco— shows that in the year 1931-32 there is approximately £1,900,000 left which could be described as articles which are tariffed; and in the year 1937-38 the corresponding figure would be £500,000 more. The purpose of my raising this question is that, on looking over the cost of the Revenue Commissioners, I find that there is an extra cost, arising out of, presumably, the imposition of these tariffs, of a sum of something over £200,000. Now, that is the Government side of this transaction. In so far as revenue is derivable, the expenditure is colossal—amounting to 40 per cent, seeing that one apportions the extra cost to the additional tariffs. That is the Minister's responsibility. I wonder if the Minister has looked into that.

There are now seven pages of customs duties of one sort or another, as against one previously. On the other side, the businessman's side, some houses in Dublin have got a particular employee whose business it is to deal with this question of getting goods cleared through the customs. The cost so far as the State is concerned is very high, and I wonder if the Minister has had his attention drawn to it, and if there is any likelihood of a reduction, or of a change of policy in regard to it.

Mr. MacEntee

On the question which has been raised by Deputy Norton and Deputy Davin, I may say that the matter of establishing the temporary classes in the Civil Service as a whole has been deferred pending the result of the actuarial investigation into the financial commitments involved. I assume that when the actuary's report is received it will be possible to consider this question as a whole and see how far we can impose on the Exchequer the additional cost which would inevitably follow the granting of established status to all temporary officers Certain preliminary consideration has already been given to this question, but the final decision has had to be deferred until we receive the actuary's report.

I may say that Deputy Davin might bear in mind that most of those who have secured establishment have done so by competitive examination. The great bulk of the present temporary preventive men, or unestablished men, have come in without examination, owing to the change in the tariff policy when it was necessary to expand the staff rather hurriedly. While they may feel some grievance at not being established, at the same time they ought to feel a certain amount of satisfaction in being in a position where they have a chance of eventually becoming established and securing pension rights. From the point of view of the taxpayer, it is not a good thing to see people overlook the advantages which make the disadvantages under which they labour at any rate more acceptable to them.

With regard to the question of facilities for civil servants to do Volunteer training, that, I think, is primarily a matter for the Minister for Defence. The particulars which I gave to the Deputy in reply to a Parliamentary question to-day set out that most of the whole-time civil servants enjoy special additional leave, with pay, ranging from periods of from six to 12 days, and have the option of getting additional leave without pay. The Minister for Defence, I think, pointed out to him that it was not necessary that 90 days' leave should be given in order to undergo 90 days' training in camp, and that the greater part of this preliminary training could be done by means of nightly drills. If the Minister for Defence is satisfied that that is the way to proceed, naturally the Minister for Finance is not prepared to force his hand. My particular responsibility is to ensure that all the Government services and Government requirements will be provided at the least possible cost to the taxpayer. If we were to make provision under which by joining the Volunteers the civil servants would be entitled to 90 days' leave with pay, and also have, of course, the possibility of securing whatever additional duties might arise by reason of membership of the Volunteers, and what ever other personal satisfaction they might derive from membership of the force, the cost of the Civil Service might be considerably increased.

General Mulcahy

The Minister has considered the employees' aspect of that? It is as well to bear it in mind in view of the criticisms made.

Mr. MacEntee

Undoubtedly, the Government will bear in mind that point of view, and I think that point of view has been met, if I may go outside the ambit of my own Department, by making it possible for Volunteers to undergo a great part of their preliminary training by means of these nightly drills. I think the Minister for Defence has had the requirements of and the position of employers and employees in mind when he adopted that expedient.

With regard to the point which Deputy Cosgrave made as to a considerable increase in the cost of the revenue service as between 1930-31 and 1938-39, there has undoubtedly been a very considerable increase in the cost of the service, very largely on the customs and excise side, and very naturally. The fact that we have embarked upon a policy of protection means that there are many more inducements to people to try to avoid the customs duties than there were prior to the change of governmental policy in that regard. Accordingly, we have had to expand the customs staff very greatly but it is altogether a wrong conclusion to arrive at, that because the amount of revenue collected by means of customs tariffs has increased, say, by £400,000 or £500,000 as compared with 1931-32, the additional expenditure upon customs officers has not been justified. After all, these customs officers are recruited to ensure, first of all, that no goods come in without paying tariff and, secondly, that any protective goods which do come in pay the full duty. The more efficient your customs staff become in enforcing the protectionist duties, by a strange paradox, the less revenue you are going to collect from protected articles, because people will not try to get stuff over the Border without paying duty. They know they are likely to be caught and, therefore, they will not put goods, so to speak, in transit. The more rigorously, as I have said, these laws are enforced, the less disposition there is for people to try to dodge the customs, and the more effective your protective duties become, so that I do not think you can equate the two things. I do not think you can equate the cost of the customs service to the amount of duty collected by it in respect of protective tariffs. You can relate it to the total amount of duty collected from all customs imports, but always in that regard you have to bear in mind that some allowance must be made for the effectiveness of your customs service. These men are, in fact, put on to enforce the tariff laws, to make sure that the customs barrier is effective and not primarily to collect revenue.

Vote put and agreed to.