With this Vote we are discussing Votes Nos. 19 and 20, which will be moved at the end of the debate.
Supplementary Estimates, 1980. - Vote 18: Office of the Minister for the Public Service (Resumed)
Debate resumed on the following motion:
"That a supplementary sum not exceeding £100,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1980, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Public Service and for payment of a grant-in-aid."
—(Minister for the Public Service.)
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I would propose to discuss the Supplementary Estimates for the Office of the Minister for the Public Service, the Civil Service Commission and Superannuation and Retired Allowances together on this Vote.
The Supplementary Estimate for the Office of the Minister for the Public Service is to meet additional expenditure on five subheads of the Vote — Travelling and Incidental Expenses, Office Machinery and other Office Supplies, Post Office Services, Gaeleagras na Seirbhíse Poiblí and a grant-in-aid to the Institute of Public Administration. The total sum required for this additional expenditure is £203,000 of which £103,000 can be met from savings elsewhere on the Vote and from an increase in Appropriations-in-Aid. The net amount required, therefore, is £100,000.
An additional sum of £75,000 is required in respect of Subhead B.1 — Travelling and Incidental Expenses:— £30,000 of this is in respect of travel and subsistence costs incurred by officers of my Department. A further £13,000 is required for training staff. The balance of £32,000 is for various services such as security and cleaning. This extra sum is required because of an increase in the volume of services being provided as well as higher costs.
An additional expenditure of £5,000 arises on Subhead B.2 — Office Machinery and other Office Supplies — to meet the cost of office equipment not provided for in the original Estimate and a general increase in the prices of equipment. A sum of £30,000 is needed to meet expenditure on Subhead C — Post Office Services. This arises because of the carry over of telephone bills into 1980, increased usage of Post Office services by the computer unit of my Department and increased telephone charges which came into operation on 1 July 1980.
Is mar gheall ar ardú ar tháillí múinteoirí páirtaimseartha i nGaeleagras agus leathnú ar réimse agus saghsanna cúrsaí atá an £5,000 breise ag teastáil faoi fo-mhírcheann F den Vóta.
The remaining increase is in respect of the grant-in-aid to the Institute of Public Administration. The amount required is £88,000 and is to offset the costs to the institute of the application of the terms of the first phase of the second national understanding. It also covers the cost to the institute of pay increases analogous to those granted to certain higher grades in the civil service in 1980 in line with the recommendations of the Devlin Review Body.
As I have mentioned, the various increases have been offset by some savings, mainly £50,000 on Subhead A.2 — Consultancy Services — and by an increase of almost the same amount in receipts from Appropriations-in-Aid.
I now turn to the Supplementary Estimate on the Vote for the Civil Service Commission. The extra amount required is £171,000 and it arises on three subheads. A.1 — Salaries, Wages and Allowances; B.1 — Travelling and Incidental Expenses; and D — Examinations. The increase of £86,000 sought for A.1 is due to the cost of the first phase of the second national understanding and the Devlin increases, together with the cost of some additional staff which it was found necessary to recruit to cope with the heavy workload which the commission have been experiencing in 1980. An extra £35,000 is sought under B.1. This is due to both increased costs and an increase in the number of boards held outside Dublin.
Under subhead D the extra sum sought is £50,000. It is required because of substantial increases in the cost of advertising examinations and the hiring of halls for them.
Regarding Vote 20 — Superannuation and Retired Allowances — a net sum of £1.936 million is required to meet unavoidable outgoings in the current year. This figure is made up of an expected gross shortfall of £2.261 million against which is set higher receipts from Appropriations-in-Aid together with a small saving on one subhead which in all amount to £325,000. The net requirement is, therefore, £1.936 million.
Since the Estimate was originally compiled various pay increases have been awarded to serving civil servants. Some of these awards were made retrospective to July 1978. The bulk of the shortfall on this Vote is the sum of the corresponding increases in respect of lump sums, pensions and gratuities for retired officers. Another factor contributing to the shortfall is a marginal net increase in the number of pensioners.
The increases in Appropriation-in-Aid flow mainly from a rise in the amount received by way of contributions to the Widows and Orphans Pension scheme and to an increase in the amount received in respect of the purchase of notional service for pension purposes, both of which exceeded expectations for the current year.
First, I should like to ask the Minister of State at the Department of the Public Service to tell us who is the Minister.
Deputy Fitzgerald.
Previous to that it was Deputy O'Kennedy and it was Deputy Colley before him. Not one of those gentlemen ever came to this House with an Estimate or a Bill for that Department. It is an illustration of the priority the Government have put on the Department, a mark of the respect in which the Department are held that I could not tell who was the Minister. I should imagine few members of the Fianna Fáil Party would be able to tell us. I am not taking from the job of Deputy Calleary. He is a junior Minister in the Department but the Minister who is responsible to the House is not present.
I should like to point out that the Minister was here last night and moved the Estimate. He is now in Paris.
He was here last night because a Minister of State cannot move an Estimate. All he had to do last night was to rise and say "I move" and then sit down.
He was here.
I would advise the Minister to be quiet and listen to me. I will come back to the reason I am making these charges. However, there are a few comments I wish to make on the Department.
There was a much publicised declaration by the Government in the past 12 months that the second phase of the Devlin award would not be given to Ministers, Ministers of State, senior civil servants and chief executive officers of semi-State bodies. This was with the evident intention of persuading those people who were engaged in negotiations on the national understanding that the Government were sincere in their efforts to reduce their own expenses. What is the position with regard to the Devlin award? Are the four categories I have mentioned getting the second phase or are they not getting it? I want the Minister of State to answer that question in his reply.
In this Supplementary Estimate the Minister is looking for an extra £30,000 in respect of the Post Office services. The original Estimate was £75,000 and they are now looking for an additional £30,000, an increase of 40 per cent. How could the Minister have got his sums so wrong? I could understand if the figure was out by 5 per cent or even 7½ per cent but it is difficult to understand how there could have been an underestimation of this amount.
A major point about the Department of the Public Service is that this was the Department about which legislation was introduced to establish five new Ministers of State earlier this year. When we were in Government in equally difficult times — I will not make a larger claim than that — there were seven junior Ministers and the normal number of senior Ministers, limited by the Constitution to 15. When there was a change of Government the then Taoiseach made a statement and I should like to quote it.
The Chair cannot see how this arises on a Supplementary Estimate.
It arises because there is an item in the Supplementary Estimate for salaries and travelling and incidental expenses and presumably some of this was incurred in travelling costs incurred by the Ministers of State.
I do not see any item for salaries for Ministers of State.
I think we are entitled to say we could turn down this Estimate on the basis that we are not satisfied with the work done by this Department.
That could be done on the general Estimate. The Deputy knows that when we are dealing with Supplementary Estimates we can consider only the four or five headings under which increases are sought.
Subhead B(1) relates to travelling and incidental expenses and the amount has increased by £75,000 over the amount estimated, never mind what the figure was last year.
I do not see how the Deputy can debate Ministers of State under that heading.
Travelling expenses have been incurred by these people. Frankly, I am very disappointed with the performance of this Department. At column 24 of the Official Report dated 5 July 1977 the then Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, said:
The creation of the new ministerial portfolio and Department
——The then Taoiseach was referring to the Department of Economic Planning and Development and this has since been disbanded——
and the transfer of functions I have announced are but the first step in a phased programme of public service reform which I intend to have developed further under the aegis of the Minister for the Public Service. In particular the institutional arrangements for planning in each Government Department will receive early attention in order to ensure that the activities of the Department are responsive to and reflect the central responsibilities for economic planning and development of the new Department.
.... The Public Service Advisory Council in their report have, rightly in my opinion, drawn attention to the fact that without conspicuous political will and commitment public service reform will not occur. The new Government will not be found wanting in this respect.
I do not think I need add anything further to that. The political will to reform the public service has been conspiciously absent so far as the Government are concerned. I am speaking from memory — I am sure that the Minister of State will correct me if I am wrong — but in three-and-a-half years I do not think the Minister for the Public Service has been to this House other than to move an Estimate. Legislation has not been introduced other than to increase the number of junior Ministers since the then Taoiseach made that fine-sounding but evidently empty claim on behalf of his Government.
I will be quite pleasant to the Minister of State because he is one of the people I like to deal with in this House. I always get a satisfactory reply from him and I am sure that any shortcomings mentioned by Deputy Barry are not his fault.
At Question Time I have raised the matter of standardisation or equalisation of retirement pensions and allowances within the public service vis-à-vis other EEC countries. Some time ago I read some statistics on this matter and I am afraid our retirement age is much higher than that elsewhere. I would like to see a concerted effort to bring down the retirement age of people in the public service. For instance, in the teaching profession a person has to serve 40 years in order to qualify for full pension. In this day and age there should be a serious attempt to reduce the qualifying number of years. It is much lower in other EEC countries. Of course, we would first expect that the age in respect of non-contributory pensions would be reduced from 66 to 65 years and we should then make an attempt to whittle away at the retirement age in the public service. That objective should be kept in mind.
People who have retired from the public service complain they do not qualify for increases as do serving members. Specifically this refers to people in the teaching profession. The increase can be given to serving members in the earlier months of the financial year but retired teachers have to wait until the following July to qualify for an increase in their pension. I find that this is inequitable and I cannot argue with these people. It is a justifiable case and something should be done to redress the imbalance. I hope that the Minister, as a professional person, will look into the matter further.
First of all, I am very sorry that Deputy Barry has no confidence in the Department of the Public Service. When the Minister for Finance, Deputy O'Kennedy, was in the House last year the complaint was that there were two of us speaking on Public Service matters. I cannot understand now why Deputy Barry is — I shall not say attacking — criticising the Minister for not being here. As I said, the Minister was here last night. If necessary, he would have spoken on the Estimate, but if he had done that there might have been criticism from the Opposition that the Ministers of State were doing nothing. I do not honestly see the point in Deputy Barry's attack on the Minister.
A question has been raised in relation to the 40 per cent increase in the postal services charge. When the postal services Estimate was being made originally, it was based on earlier prices. The Estimate since has had to be increased because of the increase in Post Office charges. There was also a considerable increase in the use of telephone services by the computer unit attached to the Department of the Public Service. Another factor was the delay in relation to the postal strike. Telephone bills for five quarters were paid in 1980 That is one of the main reasons for the increase in the telephone services which Deputy Barry estimates at 40 per cent.
Surely it would have been foreseen at the beginning that the five quarters would be paid in 1980?
It was not allowed for.
It was not allowed for, but it was known and should have been allowed for.
I accept the Deputy's criticism that it should have been, but it was not and that is the reason for the increase. I should also like to inform him that the extra Ministers of State about whom he speaks are not on the Estimate for the Department of the Public Service, as he knows quite well. They will be taken on the Estimates for their own Departments. The Deputy raised the point that he felt that the extra for travelling and incidental expenses being looked for was attributable to the extra Ministers of State.
No, I did not.
I apologise. I mistakenly thought that was what the Deputy was saying at the time.
I was trying to keep inside the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's rule.
The Deputy was trying to get around the rules.
I am sorry that Deputy Barry missed probably one of the most outstanding pieces of legislation here, the Ombudsman Bill, which was brought in by my Department of the Public Service and by me.
That was our Bill, for Heavens sake. We brought it in two years ago.
Your party certainly introduced it, during the time between the Election and the call for that Bill, then you forgot all about it, leaving it to the Department of the Public Service.
We produced an Ombudsman Bill two years ago and your Government replaced it by another piece of legislation.
There is another golden rule of the Chair that neither the Minister nor the Deputy can debate legislation on Supplementary or other Estimates.
The Bill which the Minister passed was Ombudsman Bill No. 2, because we had produced Bill No. 1.
It cannot be discussed now. I am sure that it does not make a bit of difference.
I am always prepared to abide by the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's rules.
We cannot debate legislation at this stage.
Deputy Deasy raised two questions in regard to parity. This is something which has been raised on very many occasions. I saw one deputation and the Minister saw another. Again, the Minister spent a considerable amount of time on this. Unfortunately, we have not been able to give any guarantee to the people involved. This is a matter which will have to be looked at in the light of budget discussion and budget estimates. The legislation brought in in 1974 mentioned 1 July. Sometimes, people are lucky to have pay increases before that date. I am afraid this year most of the increases came in August, September and October. A lot of people, unfortunately, will have to wait six or seven months before they get the increases. I have sympathy for the people about whom Deputy Deasy has spoken. I shall certainly pass on his comments to the Minister for consideration when the budget is being discussed.
Can the Minister hold out any hope of the system being altered?
Since I shall not be party to the budget discussions, I would not like to give the Deputy any answer.
Will the Minister of State bring it to the Minister's notice?
I do not know what the Minister will do.
It would be fair to move it back perhaps three months nearer to the date.
The unfortunate thing is that no matter what date is picked some people are going to miss out.
I can see that.
The only way in which it could be done is by parity from the original date. The annual date is a matter which will have to be decided by Government in conjunction with budget matters.
It is something to be aimed at.
It is something to be aimed at, yes.
Vote put and agreed to.