asked the Minister for the Public Service if he is aware that applicants for jobs as typists in the Civil Service are required to bring their own typewriters to test centres; and if he will abolish this practice urgently as many individual applicants have to hire machines which they cannot afford.
Ceisteanna — Questions. Oral Answers. - Civil Service Typist Tests.
11.
I am so aware. It is not proposed to abolish this long-standing practice because of the administrative problems and expense which would be involved in arranging to meet the potential demand from amongst an average of some 2,000 candidates sitting in 15 different locations.
Would the Minister agree that this is a practice that should be abolished? The Minister will appreciate that the idea of a nervous individual, boy or girl, coming along for a test being asked to cart a typewriter to the examination centre is ludicrous. Surely the Civil Service, with its many thousands of typewriters, and indeed civil servants, could do the courtesy of providing a typewriter for such individuals. Would the Minister tell us, on average, what would be the cost of hiring a typewriter for these individuals in the event of the majority of them not owning a typewriter? Would the Minister — who has been seen to be a far-sighted individual over the last 12 months — not consider this a Victorian-type practice?
I must admit that I rather shared the views expressed by the Deputy when this matter was first brought to my attention. I discovered that, prior to 1963, it had been the practice to provide typewriters for applicants. The practice was discontinued at that time, based largely on the cost element involved but not exclusively. There are usually now approximately 2,000 applicants for this examination. Therefore what we would be talking about would be the cost to the Civil Service Commissioners of finding 2,000 typewriters and making them available at 15 different locations around the country. There would also be additional cost in respect of transportation to those centres. Apparently also there is the fact that, in a number of instances, it is felt that candidates would prefer to sit the competition using the typewriter to which they are accustomed, on which they had trained and were familiar with rather than being asked to use a typewriter which they might well afterwards claim was not of sufficiently high standard and had interferred with their ability to compete successfully in the examination. The cost of typewriter hire, were it to be considered for this examination, would fall somewhere in the region of £10,000 to £15,000. I understand also that in a high number of cases where candidates have attended commercial schools or typewriter courses within their own school system the schools very often make those typewriters available to those candidates when they are competing in this examination. That has some merits in that a candidate is then sitting the examination using the typewriter with which he or she is familiar.
My main concern related to the cost of typewriters in the three individual cases brought to my attention. While the Minister has outlined very clearly what he considers to be the position, would he consider the possibility of part payment of the cost to those who may have to hire typewriters on the basis that the spurious application fee for Civil Service jobs has now been abolished? Would he not consider abolishing this piece of nonsense?
Items such as these constitute one of the reasons a partial fee for application was introduced last year. In the context of discussing in detail how an examination like this operates at 15 different centres, covering 2,000 people, the hiring of supervisors, attendant staff and payment for the hiring of the halls, the House may begin to get some idea of the total cost involved in running a single competition such as this. If the cost of hiring typewriters were to be taken on board as well it would constitute a considerable additional cost vis-à-vis the entire examination. As the Deputy said, the Government have discontinued the stipulation of an application fee. It would be possible to provide typewriters if the Civil Service Commission were prepared to centralise the examination in one centre in Dublin, when the competition could then be held over a series of days. I believe that would be rather a retrograde step in that it would place an obligation or an onus, on applicants from centres outside Dublin to travel to Dublin to compete. In many cases the cost and inconvenience to applicants of having to take on board the cost of travelling to Dublin would far out-weigh the cost — which, in many cases, is notional because very often the typewriters are either owned or borrowed — of providing typewriters at one of the provincial centres. However, I am quite prepared to bear Deputy Andrew's very understandable comments about this in mind to ascertain if there is any way in which the objectives of the Civil Service Commission and the convenience of the individual applicants might best be met.
In relation to the 15 centres and so on and the supply of typewriters, surely the Civil Service Commission would not have to supply 2,000 typewriters throughout the 15 centres? Surely one or two typewriters in each centre would solve the problem? Can the Minister say how many interviews are held at the various centres over a period of, say, 12 months. I do not follow the Minister's logic in relation to the number of typewriters that would be required. I would not have thought there would be too many at present anyway. The Minister has been very forthcoming in his reply and I do not want to be awkward. I am hopeful something may arise from it.
Mr. Coughlan
Would the Minister agree that procurement of a typewriter constitutes a major obstacle for these applicants? Would he also agree that any applicant hiring a typewriter would not have any experience of that machine. Furthermore, would he not agree that it would be much more feasible to bring these applicants to the relevant Government Departments where the vacancies exist and where they could be tested on Government standard typewriters?
The last part of the Deputy's question is rather contradictory. If applicants would be reluctant to hire a typewriter with which they would be unfamiliar they would be equally unfamiliar with a typewriter that might be provided by the Civil Service Commission or a Government Department and that is precisely the point which I was making earlier. I do not want to appear unhelpful but I did not quite follow Deputy Andrews' question. Last year there were 2,166 applicants who sat typewriting competitions at 15 different centres on the same day. Even if the competition was held over a series of days, rather than talking about one or two typewriters which would obviously be feasible, we are talking about the provision of typewriters for everybody or placing the obligation on applicants to provide the typewriters. We ought to place this matter in context. In very many cases schools or commercial colleges where applicants have attended courses make their typewriters available to the applicants, typewriters with which they are familiar and which they bring to the competitions. In many other cases, as Members of the House may know, the applicants will have their own personal typewriters because it is generally regarded that the amount of time spent on a typewriting course may not produce a standard high enough to pass a competition like this. Therefore, some applicants have their own typewriters, some use the typewriters made available by the commercial colleges and others have to hire or otherwise obtain their typewriter. I will look at the situation but I do not think it is feasible to bring about what Deputy Andrews regards as an improvement.