That is true. Many things were there but not availed of, but the Deputy will agree that where we are planning an expansion, where we are looking for funds from the European Social Fund, where people on both sides of the Border have a need for this kind of training, it would be a waste, in the literal sense of that word, to pursue separate courses on either side of the Border, to plan and to expand without regard to what is happening a few miles away on the other side of this political border. I hope very shortly that in discussions we can advance the idea further with the Northern authorities and that when the Council of Ireland is set up we will already have been engaged in preparatory work which will be of value to the Council.
I am anxious to ensure that we should give greater assistance to the trade unions in their educational programme. We have a Bill relating to trade union amalgamation. The material included in this Bill was agreed on after a great deal of discussion with the trade unions and we have sought permission to introduce it in the House. The main features of the Bill were drawn up under the aegis of my predecessor, Deputy Brennan, during his period of office. I have thought it desirable to add to this Bill a provision for funds for the trade unions to help their educational programme on the general principle that such help was in their interest, and in the general interest of equity. We give a great deal of assistance at present to the Irish Management Institute for management education. In the current financial year, for example, it is proposed to pay a non-capital grant of £300,000 and a capital grant of £150,000 to the Irish Management Institute. On the other hand, we offer to the educational and advisory services of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions a grant of £45,000.
I agree that under the technical assistance of AnCO there is a certain amount of cash available to AnCO which can be utilised by trade unions. In broad outline the position at present is that the amount of investment by the State towards management education is in excess of that given for the similar purpose to trade unions. I am satisfied that there is an urgent need to increase the amount of trade union education currently being provided in view of the proposed development in the field of worker participation both at national level and through the various schemes being drawn up by the Employer-Labour Conference at the level of industry.
Deputies will be aware that the Employer-Labour Conference at present has a sub-committee working on the whole idea of worker participation. We are committed to introducing a similar principle into the State industry. Nobody would suggest that we can jump from the situation at present where workers have little say in the direction of their firms in consultative procedures to one of fullyfledged worker participation in decision making without a great increase in the availability of trade union education. This is why I have come to the conclusion that it would be desirable in any proposed Trade Union Amalgamation Bill that there should be a section to permit greater funds to be made available to trade unions to advance trade union education.
It is also my intention to discuss with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions the allocation of additional funds for the training of women trade union officials so that they will be able to play a more active part in their organisation, and in industry generally. The Equal Pay Bill legislation will be of no great practical import unless there can be an equalisation of opportunity which will allow women in industry, industrial life, and women in our community, to take their rightful place. The number of women trade union officials is too small at present. I would welcome a greater number of female trade union officials to ensure that equal pay provisions are followed up throughout the trade union movement. For this purpose I think it desirable that we should consider favourably grants for the education and training of women trade union officials.
One of the bulwarks of a mature democracy is that there should be a strong trade union movement. For that purpose the trade union movement should have an independent educational programme. We seek no control of any sort over the educational programme of the unions; we simply wish it to expand and to be of a sufficiently high standard.
On the question of rights commissioners I should like to state that this has been a successful service. It was inaugurated in 1970. Mr. Con Murphy is now the sole inheriter of the service and he has been extremely successful. We must reconsider the role of the service. At present it investigates individual disputes unconnected with pay or hours of work. Many disputes commence, not because of any major matter, but with some individual grievance. The rights commissioner service was designed to meet this aspect of industrial relations. It is one that concerns the individual who feels that an injustice has been committed.
Consideration must now be given to perhaps a regional organisation of rights commissioners. It may be considered desirable that particular regions of the country should have a rights commissioner residing in such an area. Very shortly I am having a full discussion on this matter with Mr. Murphy. I believe we can come to certain conclusions about the service which will see us move forward to be of further use to Irish industry.
The Labour Court—an independent body, governed under the Industrial Relations Act—I propose to meet shortly to see how the service of the court can be expanded and made more beneficial for Irish industry. It might be considered that the conciliation service attached to the court should now have a number of people proficient in productivity agreements attached to it. It may be considered also that a more active role should be designed for the conciliation service. Under present legislation they have the power, as I read it, to intervene in disputes; but I would hope that they would be given a more active role to permit them to move in ahead of an industrial dispute breaking out. I would hope that the court would be given a more active role which would ensure that grievance procedure is installed in every firm in the country, to ensure that joint consultation arrangements are available throughout Irish industry. We must review the position of the conciliation service of the court and all services in industrial relations against the background of the development of consultation in industry as a whole and the development of worker participation.
I have dealt with training matters, and with some aspects of industrial relations, trade union education, proposed legislation, and social policy of the EEC. I have already made the point, when dealing with the social policy of the EEC, that we are anxious to see that the social policy should be the dominant policy, the policy which shapes other policy, the pace setter. I take literally what the heads of state said last October about the future of the Community, that it should have a human face. We must take it from that source to be an important pronouncement on the future development of the Community.
The resources of the Social Fund, on which that social policy depends for financing, must be adequate to make a real contribution to the rapid development of training, retraining and resettlement programmes in the less-developed regions of the Community. That fund must be substantially increased. I see in this morning's papers that the commissioner is seeking an increase in the funds at his disposal. Even with the increase in funds it is difficult to see how all the commitments on that fund can be made from the existing budget allocation.
I believe that serious consideration should be given to the introduction of differential rates of Social Fund assistance related to the relative needs, and resources, of the different regions. The idea is—and I made this point at a recent meeting of the Council of Ministers—that the major purpose of the Social Fund should be to equalise the opportunities for employment between the different countries of the Community. If the Social Fund is raided by the larger countries of the Community to settle the internal problems of these countries—problems such as migrant workers in Germany and France—if the funds at the disposal of the Community are raided to settle these problems for the benefit of the major economies, nothing will be left to deal with the problems of small countries such as Ireland, our need for more job opportunities and for expansion in the training facilities available to our work force—a use we have sought from the fund, the main thrust of the Irish application being designed to obtain more money for training of our work force. But if there is no money to meet our request, if the money has been exhausted due to the demands of Germany and others to settle the vexed question of migrant workers then, obviously, the social policy of the Community will be a mockery. That is why it is important that there should be a clear statement of principle in any social document adopted at Community level that it is to be a Community social policy and, if that is so, its first objective must be to make employment opportunities equal between the regions. Therefore, I believe that there should be a limit on the amount of cash that could be sought by the larger countries, that there should be a clear statement of principle ensuring that smaller countries' problems would have first priority and first call on available funds. In the absence of such a statement of intent in relation to the Community Social Fund the problems which Irish entry into EEC was expected to solve will remain unsolved and the lack of employment opportunites over our whole economy will continue in intensified form.
That is why our delegation at Council of Ministers' meetings has been insistent that there should be this clear commitment to a Community social policy and not to one which the larger powers may use to settle the after-dinner growth pains of their own economies. The position we have adopted is in true accord with the national interest. Deputies of all parties will agree that this is not political pique on our part in regard to the commissioner himself—the newspapers attempted to cast that aspertion on points made by the Irish delegation at the last Council of Ministers' meeting. It was solely to ensure what we conceived to be and what Deputies of all parties will agree is in the national interest that the social policy of the Community must serve the interests of smaller countries.
There is one point I want to make regarding the safety aspects of factory legislation. I have appointed a medical consultant to the staff to make a report. The whole area of factory legislation is in need of revision and, obviously, worker-safety legislation requires a new dimension which would answer certain changed conditions. Legislation in other EEC countries has taken account of the need for expert medical advice to ensure that hazards to health unforeseen by earlier legislation should now be catered for. We hope to have additional recruits with a medical background to the factory inspectorate. That is important in view of the new requirements. The survey by the medical consultant will begin within the next month and I hope his report will be with us shortly so that we may incorporate his recommendations in any legislation that may be necessary.
In conclusion, the Department will so far as possible see that training facilities are expanded throughout the country more rapidly and we shall speed up and tackle at as formal a level as political conditions permit co-operation across the Border with the Northern training authority for the greater benefit of people on either side of the Border to avoid overlapping in courses and so on; also to ensure that we do not go separate ways in our requirements regarding the European social funds. The placement service for getting people jobs has been expanded at a very high rate in the past few months. I am still not happy that there is the same quality of service available throughout the country. I do not want a situation where it could be said that the service and the attention of the Department is focussed on any one part of the country because any citizen in any part of the country is entitled to the best service available. This will mean constant expansion; more offices must be opened and staffed by the right people.
I am giving close attention to the matter of an increase in the resettlement allowance which permits a worker to change his place of work, to move house and family and so ensure greater labour mobility. I am actively considering increasing the allowance for resettlement. This is very important for less developed regions where very often an industrial development can be held up through lack of housing or lack of key workers. It may be necessary in the interests of starting an industry that difficulties regarding house-buying and resettlement of key workers should be eased as much as possible by the State. Otherwise, an industrial development in an area crying out for new jobs might be held up. I hope to make a decision about an increase in that area very soon.
Generally, we are seeking to update all legislation governing conditions at work because in many cases the provisions are out of date going back as far as 1936 and need review.
In industrial relations in general I hope to expand on the foundation of the service available at Labour Court level. I have in mind especially the extension, perhaps on a regional basis, of the rights commissioner, and the possibility that the conciliation service of the court might be given a greater area of initiative to ensure that a conciliation officer could be available before the actual dispute had reached crisis or breakdown proportions the possibility that the conciliation service could come in at a very early stage in disputes and in the light of this more positive role, take on such tasks as ensuring that grievance procedure is installed in firms. Since it is part of their work to ensure that disputes can be settled quickly, it might be considered helpful to ensure that part of their task would be to see that certain steps were taken by firms that would be in that general direction. It might also be necessary to ensure that officers in that section would have special training in reading productivity agreements, because more and more in Irish industry we see evidence of these agreements coming into being.
That is the picture as it faces us at this time: legislation in the areas where we can legislate; in general, the economic centre of the ministry to be expanded, to be improved; abroad, in our contact with the Community, at the Council of Ministers' level, a determined pursuit of the idea that the social policy of the Community should dominate all other policies of the Community. There is a tendency in Community decision, as Deputies will have noticed, to see economic decisions to be totally separate from social policy. I would hope, to the limit that it is in my power at the council meetings, to ensure that this would be corrected, to help the commissioner to ensure that social policy is the dominant policy, so that the eventual social policy to be adopted later this year will be a Community policy in the true sense, not a social policy simply at the beck and call of the great powers of the EEC but a genuine Community policy aimed at securing Community cohesion. I do not think we can have cohesion in the EEC if one region has less opportunities than another. If our future in the Community is simply to be a supplier of cheap labour, then the hopes that many people rested on entry to the EEC will be set at naught.
It so happens that the national interest of this country and our economic predicament coincides with the necessity for the Community to adopt a true social policy. Certainly this Community will not develop into the political entity that some of its founders wished for it in the aftermath of the economic and monetary union, in fact, such a step would be unthinkable, in the absence of the espousal of a correct social policy. That is why we should continue to press for the adoption of such a policy.
The note I have attempted to sound in regard to all the activities of the ministry is that we are not neutral; we are solidly on the side of the people who work for a living in Ireland, in order to ensure that they enjoy better conditions in their place of work, have greater economic possibilities open to them, and training possibilities which will increase their bargaining power for better wages and a better standard of living. My Department will do all in its power to improve their chances in this area.
