On the motion for the Adjournment, Deputy Ryan gave notice that he would raise the matter of a number of temporary civil servants who received seven-day dismissal notices to expire next Monday.
Adjournment Debate. - Dismissal Notices to Temporary Civil Servants.
Mr. Ryan
I desire to direct public attention to what I consider to be a shocking display of callousness and an appalling lack of appreciation by the Government last Monday in serving, on at least seven long-serving and loyal civil servants, seven-day notices terminating their employment. On the information given to me, some of these civil servants have service in this Department extending over 20 years. One has as many as 29 years' service; one has 26; one has 19; and the balance have an average length of service of 11 to 12 years.
Last Monday, there was served on them a notice which told them that in accordance with the terms of their employment "they were hereby given one week's notice of termination of engagement as and from 17th May, 1960." They were further informed that: "Your services are not required after the 23rd day of May, 1960. You are entitled," said the notice, "to so many days leave and you should proceed to take this leave during the period of notice and be in attendance on your last day of service." We can paraphrase that by saying: "After 29 years, you can have a ‘bazz-off' now, but be back on 23rd May to get a kick in the pants."
This is an appalling state of affairs and I wonder if the Minister has properly considered the reaction it will have throughout the whole Civil Service, where there are at least 10,500 so-called temporary civil servants with over five years' service. It means that no consideration whatsoever has been given to these people who have given the best years of their lives to the State, merely because they do not comply with some technical requirement regarding establishment. The ages of these seven unfortunates range from 56 years to around the early sixties. These are men who are at a stage in their lives when it is next to impossible for them to get alternative employment. The least service any of them has given is 11 years, the longest 29 years, and at the end of all that, these men, who have served the State on one side of the hatch of an employment exchange, are being asked to spend the rest of their days on the other side of the hatch, joining the queue of 14,000 unemployed who queue there every week, week in and week out, to report and collect at the employment exchange.
This is a disgraceful action on the part of the State and it is a shocking example to all employers. It is as much as saying to them longevity of service and loyalty of service are of no consequence whatever. We are entitled to ask why this is being done. It certainly is no answer to say that there are fewer people registering at employment exchanges now than there were a few years ago.
Hear, hear!
Mr. Ryan
The fact is that there are 51,000 fewer jobs available. The people have gone abroad, so, needless to say, there are fewer presenting themselves at employment exchanges, but, in the shorter period of 11 years' service which some of these people have, we have had 30,000 fewer employed. The need for the services of these people was there then and the need is still there. One has the suspicion that this is the thin end of the wedge which the Government are using under their so-called scheme of reorganisation of the Civil Service, under which adult males are to be sacrificed for young girls just out of school, who will spend a few years working until they are collected and brought into the bonds of holy matrimony. In other words, the fathers of households are being penalised in order that the Government may get cheap labour.
I should have preferred to have got all the answers of the Government to all facets of this disgraceful action on their part before launching my attack upon them, but the rules of the House required four days' notice from the earliest date possible on which a Parliamentary reply could be given. That would bring it up to next Tuesday and that is why I pressed that this matter might be heard to-day, in the hope, which I trust is not a forlorn one, that the Minister might see his way to withdraw these notices and allow the matter to be further considered.
It is not without significance that the Temporary Clerks (Employment Exchanges) Association, of which these people are members, has made an application under the conciliation and arbitration scheme, and their application is supported by all the staff side in the Department of Social Welfare and, I understand, throughout the whole of the Civil Service, for a confined competition for establishment of clerks in employment exchanges, to be held before July, 1960, and that this competition be confined to clerks who have a minimum service of ten years' duration. Why the indecent haste to dismiss these long-serving loyal civil servants before their reasonable application is considered at conciliation and arbitration level? It seems to be an effort to dismiss them before justice can be done to them.
It is time that we as a nation considered our obligations to people who have given long service in the reasonable expectation that they will not be dismissed on a seven days' notice when they come to the late fifties or early sixties. The problem of the over-staffing of the Civil Service of course is a very real one and we in Fine Gael are very conscious of it. We are as anxious as the Government that the over-staffing should be reduced and that the efficiency of the service should be increased, but it is a cardinal principle, from which Fine Gael will not depart, that the reorganisation must be brought about through the normal wastage by reason of retirements and deaths.
We believe that it is morally wrong to take people into the Government service for long periods of ten, 20— aye, and 30 years—and then dismiss them when it is next to impossible for them to obtain alternative employment. If there is redundancy and if there is need to get rid of superfluous staff, the first people to go should be the young people who still have a chance of finding alternative employment, who are still acceptable in different fields of employment. A civil servant who has been working in an employment exchange for 20 years on a particular type of work and who is between 55 and 60 years of age will find it next to impossible to get alternative employment. That is why the action of the Parliamentary Secretary is to be so very strongly deplored.
I understand, but I have no definite information on the matter, that these notices have been served on more than the seven to whom I have already referred, that is, five in the Werburgh Street employment exchange and two in Gardiner Street. My latest information, which only came to me a very short while ago, is that similar notices have been served on a number of persons in the headquarters staff of the Department of Social Welfare. I am also informed that there is one widow with three dependent children involved in this matter.
I feel that the Department which carries the title "Social Welfare" should have regard to social welfare and to the principles of social welfare laid down in the Constitution. Instead, we find that the very Department which is supposed to promote social welfare is the Department which is acting in this unchristian and most unjust manner.
In his speech on the Budget this year the Minister for Finance spoke about the reorganisation of the Civil Service and he mentioned that under the reorganisation of the Civil Service it was proposed to reduce the number of clerical officers and to replace them by persons of a more junior status, but he said that these material changes can be made only gradually. It seems to me that that pious expression on his part was so much empty verbiage when we see, within a few weeks of that statement being made, something that is not gradual but which is very definite and very peremptory being done. We see a number of long-serving members of the Civil Service being dismissed although, so far as I know, no complaint whatsoever has been made about the manner in which they have carried out their duties.
I understand that the duties that these people perform will still have to be done. In a question which I tabled for next Tuesday I want to know in what manner the work formerly done by these people will be done in future. Is it to be done by machines or is it to be done by cheaper female labour? It is most undesirable, if that is the attitude of the Government, and I am certainly exceedingly anxious to know what the answer of the Parliamentary Secretary will be to these charges which I have made against the Government.
I make these charges out of a sense of duty, which arises from a reasonable interpretation of the facts. If there is some reason to justify this action it would want to be a very, very strong reason indeed to justify the giving of seven days' peremptory notice to people who have served the State in such a loyal and efficient manner over so many years.
There is, in relation to this matter, a very vital issue at stake, namely, where is it all going to end? This is being done suddenly and apparently without just reason and all the unestablished civil servants, even outside this Department, can apparently now expect the same treatment. Longevity of service, apparently, is not to be valued at all.
I appreciate the difference that exists between established and unestablished civil servants but it is very, very wrong that the State should allow people to remain in constant employment for such a long period as 25 to 30 years and then turn around and say that, in accordance with the terms of their employment, they must go. If the State retains people for such a long period, these people have a reasonable right to expect that they will be continued in their jobs until the end of their days unless they are unsatisfactory in the manner in which they carry out their duties.
I have confined my remarks to the duties which these individuals have performed in the Department of Social Welfare and to the longevity of service they have given in the Department of Social Welfare because I believe that that is the vital matter in relation to this whole affair. But, it is of some significance that a majority of these men gave loyal and patriotic service to this State in another field. Several of them are proud bearers of medals for the part they played in the fight for Irish freedom and the majority of them had service in the National Army. It is unfortunate that the Government, who are forever crying out to private industry to give an opportunity for employment to ex-Servicemen, should act in such a callous manner and should dismiss these ex-Servicemen because, apparently, the State feels that it can do without them or that if somebody must go, they should be the first to go.
I would, therefore, very earnestly urge the Parliamentary Secretary to have this matter reconsidered fully and to have these notices withdrawn before next Monday in order that the men affected by them may have the opportunity, if conciliation and arbitration machinery is extended to them, of entering for a confined examination, the passing of which would justify their establishment. That is one consideration.
The Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to the ten minutes left.
Mr. Ryan
I appreciate that, Sir. I am just about to conclude. The alternative that I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider is that he would withdraw the notices, leave these people as they are at the moment and allow them to spend the rest of their active lives in the duties that they have been carrying out so efficiently and loyally for so many years.
We are not dealing with established or unestablished civil servants. We are dealing with temporary clerks in the employment of the Department of Social Welfare. We are not the only Department who employ temporary clerks. Temporary employees of all kinds, when they enter into employment, know the terms and conditions under which they enter. If Deputy Ryan were dealing with the whole problem of the temporary clerks in the Department of Social Welfare, there might be something to say for his case, although it would be a weak one.
Temporary clerks have been employed, for years before the Department of Social Welfare was set up, dealing with social services. They have been employed all over the State. The number we employed last year was 76 and we let 45 of them go. Many of them had Tan medals. Many of them had National Army service and many of them were 20 years in temporary employment in our service from Tralee to Donegal. Those in Dublin were lucky. In the last couple of years they did not have to go in Dublin.
The Deputy over-painted the picture when he said they were in continuous employment in Dublin. Of the seven mentioned, four had broken service. They got a week's notice and they made the case to us that they should let their case go to conciliation and arbitration and we have given them a week's extension without any pressure from anybody. In the case of the two women involved, we immediately got busy in the other Departments and we placed them.
That is the right line to take.
I know it is.
Why did you not do that with the others?
We did it with the rest of them——
Mr. Ryan
But why——
The Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to reply without interruption.
Mr. Ryan
While I was asking a polite question the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach should have kept out of it.
I did not catch what the Deputy said. I have indicated that we are trying to place the other men. I want to get down to this question of their employment. When I came into office there were certain regulations made by my predecessor. I allowed the system to remain whereby:
Temporary clerks appointed since 31st March, 1954, should be discharged in the order of seniority——
I did not interfere with that. Then I added:
In the case of temporary clerks appointed before 31st March, 1954, in all cases domestic circumstances should be the deciding factor.
Where domestic circumstances are equal, preference should be given to old I.R.A. men holding Service Medals.
Where domestic circumstances are equal and there is no old I.R.A. man on the panel, preference should be given to those with Army service during the Emergency, 1939 to 1945.
When I was Parliamentary Secretary before, I was in touch with these men. There was, I think, a confined examination for which 400 sat and I pressed the Minister for Finance to take them on in cadres of 10. When there was a change of Government and another Minister came in, he finished the taking on of the successful candidates and since I came back I have been in direct contact with these men. I have impressed on them the advisability of getting in touch with the proper authorities in order that they might sit for a confined examination. I do not want to be hard on these men. I am in a privileged position here but I want to say, with all due regard to charity, I think they made fools of themselves and made a mess of things. The information that Deputy Ryan has is that there would be a confined examination by some date in June or July. Who made that proposal? Was it the Government, the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Social Welfare? It was not; that is the proposal they made themselves. I am not in authority to do it and neither is the Minister for Social Welfare. The Government must take all the circumstances into account.
Deputy Ryan spoke about 10,500 temporary civil servants. I suppose he means postmen and several other employees up and down the country. They are in a different position altogether. I got very little notice of this Question. I was rung up at the office around 4 o'clock and told that it would be on but I could get cadres of people in similar temporary employment over years. Deputy Ryan should bear in mind that if these men have to go, if one of them has to go, the door is open for him to come back in September or October when the register goes up again. That has been the picture for years all over rural Ireland—in Limerick, Tralee, Cork and elsewhere, in every exchange you can think of.
Dublin, as I say, has been lucky. It is no pleasure for me to sanction notice to them to go. The regulations are there and were made before ever I came into the Department. When the register falls—I think it is for every 100 on the register that we employ a temporary clerk—we do everything possible to keep them employed. We bring up from the country writing assistants and clerical officers and do everything to provide occupation for them. In doing that we have a problem, and the day ultimately comes when, in order to be fair to the people who put up the money, we must take action. While it has been the order of things that the temporary clerks go in the country, it has come to Dublin's turn now. We have acceded to the request, as I said, to let this matter hang fire for a week and in the meantime we are doing everything possible to get work for these people.
That is the right line of policy.
I sincerely hope that this situation will solve itself and that they will get this confined examination they are seeking. It certainly has not been our fault all through that they have not got it so far. I do not think the Deputy made any other point. I have given my answer.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 24th May, 1960.