Deputy Dillon has given notice that he wishes to raise the subject matter of Question No. 9 on today's Order Paper on the Adjournment.
Adjournment Debate. - Monaghan Post Office Labourers.
At Question Time today, I had a question to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs asking:
why five men who were working as temporary labourers at Monaghan head office were laid off work and others employed in their place, some of whom left other employment to take the places of the men laid off.
The Minister asked his Parliamentary Secretary to deal with the question. The Parliamentary Secretary, I am sure, gave a true and faithful account of the information contained in his brief to the House, but I asked several supplementary questions and I would recall to the House that in the course of those supplementaries, I employed with due deliberation the adjectives "illegal" and "corrupt" in regard to the conduct of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. The Minister and I represent the same constituency. The men on whose behalf I am now speaking are his constituents, to whom he has a very special duty to see justice done and I refuse to allow him to shuffle off his responsibility, either as a Deputy to his constituency, or as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, on to the Parliamentary Secretary who is his subordinate in the administration of the Department for which he, the Minister, is primarily responsible to the House.
The facts of this case are these, and I pledge my honour to the House that these are the facts and I have urged the Minister, and he has accepted by his presence the challenge to be here present, to check me if I present to the House anything but the literal truth. We are all familiar with conditions in rural Ireland and there are in most substantial towns in rural Ireland certain elements of the community who depend largely for their livelihood on temporary work. Some are fortunate enough to get recurrent periods of temporary work from a Department of State, or a semi-State corporation, such as the Electricity Supply Board, and naturally if they discharge their duties satisfactorily and for a protracted period are called back again and again to the service of the Department of State or semi-State corporation. They come to depend on that as a virtually quasi-permanent source of employment.
Amongst these employees in Monaghan were five labouring men with modest incomes and with families. In the ordinary course towards the end of August the temporary work came to an end and to give the House an idea of the kind of men they are, they made no complaint; they said they knew that kind of thing happened in the Post Office: they had work to do as long as it was there and were glad of the chance to labour and be paid. They knew further employment would not be available until a new job of an analogous character was undertaken. Shortly afterwards work of an analogous character was undertaken in Monaghan and these five men confidently expected to be re-employed. To their amazement, they were not.
Now we could argue the toss about whether there were five or seven men involved. I want to spotlight the case of two men in respect of whom I can pledge my word to the House. Two of the men who had been discharged in August went to seek employment again from the ganger or, I think they call him the engineer in the Post Office, and were told they would not be employed. They asked: "Why, is there not another job of work on?" And they were told: "Yes." I will not mention names here but the better to inform the Minister, to give him a better chance, I will give him initials. The engineer said: "Your places have been taken by L. and M." These men said that that could not be, that those men were in jobs already in the mineral water factory. The ganger said: "No, they are not, they are working on the Post Office job in Monaghan." These men went about their business and wrote to me.
I put down this question and the Minister today says he has passed the matter to the Parliamentary Secretary who will answer the query I put but I pressed him strongly and said I was not satisfied to deal with the Parliamentary Secretary, that the Minister was paid for this and should face the music and render an account to the House. The Minister intervened and said: "No, I will not; I have given my answer to the Deputy's question in the public press——
The Parliamentary Secretary was formally delegated the authority for staff relations and I have every confidence in his capacity to reply.
The Minister has declared that he has communicated his answer to this query to the public press. Here is his answer. It is in The Northern Standard of last Friday, November 24, and is addressed to the Editor of that paper and dated 21st November, 1967:
Sir,
My attention has been drawn to a report and editorial article in your issue of 17th November last regarding the employment of temporary labour for Post Office engineering purposes in the Monaghan area.
The standard procedure for recruiting temporary labourers for the Post Office Engineering Branch is that nominations for the work are obtained from Local Employment Exchanges.
Selection is made at local level and is based on suitability for the job. Previous experience in the Post Office is taken into account but it is not an overriding consideration. Temporary labourers do not possess an entitlement to continuity of employment; regular labouring work in the Post Office being performed by a grade of quasi-permanent labourer. Temporary labourers are employed on a casual basis and are not retained when the need for their services ceases.
The standard procedure in regard to temporary labourers was followed in the Monaghan area. Seven men who had been taken on in September 1966, were let go at the beginning of August, 1967, when they were no longer needed. Subsequently, more temporary work became available. Seven men, all of whom had been nominated by the local Employment Exchange, were selected as the most suitable for the work and they were taken on at the end of September. One left after two days and he was replaced by the next most suitable candidate nominated by the Employment Exchange. Four of the men who had been let go in August were re-employed; the three who were not re-employed were regarded as less suitable than the men selected. I emphatically repudiate the suggestions made at the meeting of the Monaghan Urban District Council, as reported by you, that there were irregularities in the employment of the men concerned; and I am satisfied that no grounds exist for an inquiry as suggested in your editorial article. I trust that my statement of the facts of the matter will be given the same prominence as the unwarranted allegations reported in your columns.
Yours, etc.,
Erskine Childers.
If you did not get publicity enough in The Northern Standard, I am giving you publicity now. I have been 35 years in the Dáil. Looking around me here I see no Deputy who has been here longer than I have. We have all had experience of the practice of what we call in Cavan and Monaghan “The bureau” and in the rest of the country the labour exchange. You cannot be registered at the labour exchange as being available for work unless you are unemployed. Is that true or false? Is that not the common experience of us all?
It is statutory.
I am now alleging against the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs that in order to provide a corrupt preference for political supporters of his own and of Deputy Mooney, he displaced those men from the work to which they were entitled and fraudulently and illegally accepted from the manager of the employment exchange the names of two men who were in fact employed at the time the labour exchange notified the responsible Post Office official in Monaghan they were available for employment.
Let us have no doubt or quibble about it. I pledge my personal honour that two men, whom I shall describe as L and M, were engaged in insurable employment in a mineral water factory in Monaghan up to the Saturday before the Monday on which they began work in the post office. I say that the Minister and his colleague, Deputy Mooney, knew that. I say that the Minister corruptly and illegally intervened in order to injure two ordinary working men to collect unworthy and ignoble political kudos for himself and Deputy Mooney, one of whom is in imminent danger of losing his seat in Monaghan at the next general election.
Those are words I hate to use about a Minister of State. I want to remind the House that I knew this kind of business was going on for years. But this is the first time I have caught them flagrante delicto. This is the first time I have had the material with which to pin the hand of the cheat to the table on which it sought to cheat two working men. I am asking no more for these men than the right honestly to work for the pay with which to feed their families. I do not know whether these men who have been put out of work ever cast a vote for me in their lives. They did not come to me until the matter had been raised at the Monaghan Urban District Council and the Minister had announced there were no grounds for a public inquiry. Then, and only then, did they write to me and authorise me to speak on their behalf in this House.
I am charging the Minister in public with corruption and illegality. I am charging him with a conspiracy to that end, a conspiracy which could not have been successfully prosecuted without at least the consent, tacit or expressed, of his colleague, the Minister for Social Welfare. That is a grave indictment. I think I am entitled to ask of the Minister that, in admitting these facts, he will concede that an inquiry must be held to determine the true source of this corruption and why this illegality was allowed. I do not lightly make charges of this character in the House. The Minister and I have been Members for Monaghan for many years. It has been our practice, which I have recommended to the younger Members of the House, that if we had differences, they should be conducted in terms of courtesy and restraint, owing to our common representation of the same constituency, and that we should withhold from criticism of one another a severity and harshness of language which it would be quite legitimate to employ in regard to others in the House.
I am 35 years a Member of this House. I am an ex-Minister of an Irish Government. I am an ex-Leader of the Opposition. I am what I am. I stake all this on the truth of what I am reporting to Dáil Éireann now. I am claiming— I am not asking—for reinstatement. I am not pleading for jobs for anybody. I am asking that corruption, illegality and injustice should be inquired into and fathered on the individual or individuals responsible for them. I am convinced this injustice arose from no local decision. I am satisfied that it arose as a result of a direction, tacit or implied, from the Minister or officers under his direct invigilation. The local officer of the Department is entitled to vindication from his neighbour's feeling that he has acted unjustly by his neighbour.
The Minister has only ten minutes to reply.
And he will get it. I believe, according to that clock, I have a minute, but the other clock is a minute faster. The Ceann Comhairle will excuse me if I was travelling by that clock. The local officer is entitled to be vindicated from this charge. Whether the guilt rests on the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister or Deputy Mooney is a matter for inquiry, and I demand as of right that such an inquiry should be established.
Deputy Dillon, in making this onslaught on his colleague, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and Transport and Power, has quite obviously used the full extent of his Parliamentary experience at the lowest level to endeavour to justify a claim of corruption. It is extraordinary that he endeavours to justify this claim of corruption by saying that he has conducted himself properly down through the years and by offering his example to younger Deputies as one which they might emulate. I think the example he has given tonight is certainly not one which can in any shape or form be recommended to younger Deputies.
This offence which he suggests the Minister has offered the House or the nation by reason of some extraordinary arrangement which the Minister or I as Parliamentary Secretary appear to have arranged in Monaghan is just a tremendous working up of hatred which obviously has been built up in Deputy Dillon down through the years, a hatred which he explained during the course of the debate as being based on the fact that his Party and himself have only succeeded in getting one of the seats in the Monaghan constituency, and he is endeavouring——
The line is getting slender.
What about cherishing all the children of the nation equally?
I am surprised that Deputy Dillon, with all his experience, finds it necessary to bring in his collection of henchmen to back him up at this stage. It was extraordinary that he should claim in the course of his dissertation that it was unheard of and completely new that the employment exchanges as such should take registration for employment from anybody except those people who are already unemployed. It is a recognised fact that a man, while in employment, may continue to be registered so that his name may be forwarded for any vacancies that may arise. It is a known thing and I am surprised that Deputy Dillon with his 35 years of experience is not aware of that basic fact.
Pursuant to what provisions?
I am also surprised he is not aware that it is a matter for the Minister for Labour and not the Minister for Social Welfare, as Deputy Dillon suggested.
(Cavan): The names on the list——
The Parliamentary Secretary is entitled to speak without interruption.
(Cavan): I merely want to point out——
I am sure Deputy Dillon wishes a reply.
I have not said a word. I did not even rebut the allegation that I hated somebody.
He could not do that. It is established. It is quite customary for the engineer in any area, when he has vacancies, to choose the people whom he thinks are the most qualified for the job from the list supplied to him from the employment exchange. There is nothing strange about the system followed in this instance, and I want to assure the Deputy and the House that no specific instruction went from the Minister or from the Parliamentary Secretary regarding the employment of those seven people who are employed in Monaghan.
(Cavan): When did the two sign on?
The week before. From what checks I have been able to make these two people were signed on the previous week.
Hear, hear.
Whether they would have signed on prior to that I am not aware. I was not specifically inquiring as to when people signed on. The one thing I wanted to establish was that the engineer in the area made no mistake in so far as he took on people who were not registered.
He made sure of that.
Cherish all the children of the nation equally.
I was making these inquiries following the setting down of the Parliamentary Question. Apart from that I made no inquiries at all, neither did the Minister, into the employment of any of those people at the time they were employed. There was no inquiry made from my office in connection with it.
Are you blaming Deputy Mooney for this performance?
I am not blaming Deputy Mooney.
The Parliamentary Secretary did not exonerate him.
The one thing I am trying to do is to state the facts and refute the allegations that have been made that the Minister or myself sent any direction to the engineer in the area towards the appointment of any particular person. I see nothing strange, and I am satisfied that the people on Deputy Dillon's side of the House see nothing strange in people being offered employment in a position which was better than the position in which they were.
Provided they do not sign on the week before.
Surely Deputy Dillon is not trying to suggest that no man in employment is entitled to improve himself? I say that if a man is in any sort of medium-sized job with a certain amount of pay and sees the possibility of getting into a position where the conditions are better, he is entitled to go looking for it. Deputy Dillon is endeavouring to give the impression that he is not so entitled. In this particular case, if a man is in a position which he regards as somewhat temporary and with which he is not satisfied, there is nothing to stop that man from signing on at the exchange to be offered some other type of employment.
Provided he is not told the day before to do it.
Deputy Dillon made the point himself that there are people in rural areas who are looking forward to being offered temporary employment of one type or another, and in this instance he makes the case that there were two people passed over simply to accommodate L. and M. of whom he spoke.
One of whom was a process server.
I am not aware of that.
You know it now.
He is more equal than others.
The Parliamentary Secretary has one minute left. Deputies should cease interrupting.
I want to assure the House that the engineer, in the selection of the people that he thought were best suited for the job, would not have any knowledge as to whether any of the applicants for the position would have been in other employment.
And he living in the town? Are you daft?
In my own town—and I am sure I have more recourse to it than Deputy Dillon has to his town of Monaghan——
I am sure you need it.
——if somebody came looking for a job I would not know whether they had been in employment elsewhere. These groups of workers are employed all over the country and there are very few complaints. One does get complaints. I get complaints from members of my own Party to the effect——
(Cavan): What is the justification for going down to No. 7 on the list instead of taking No. 1?
I want to assure Deputy Fitzpatrick that he knows nothing about the situation. No list comes up to the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister, and I want to deny emphatically the allegations that Deputy Dillon has made. I would prefer to be able to go further and be more explicit but I have not been allowed due to the interruptions on the far side.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 30th November, 1967.