At the outset I want to thank you a Cheann Comhairle, for affording me the opportunity to raise this issue on the Adjournment. It is an issue that is of concern to you in so far as it relates to the rights of Deputies. If Deputy Colley who is in the House, or Deputy Ruairí Quinn, who has indicated an interest in the matter, wants to take up some of my time I am happy that that should be done.
I want to begin by explaining the circumstances in which I have come to raise this question. The issue was highlighted for me when I asked one of my colleagues to put down a question to the Minister for Labour. That question was tabled by my colleague, Deputy Fergus O'Brien, the party Chief Whip, and it sought to ask the Minister for Labour if he was satisfied that the arrangements announced by him in relation to additional payments to certain trainees for Christmas, in fact, operated so as to ensure that there was no disincentive to the persons taking up training opportunities.
That question drew a response from you, a Cheann Comhairle, and the response was to rule the question out of order. In doing so you referred to an answer given by the Minister for Labour to a series of questions that were put down to him on the first day back after the recess. If that decision was to stand and be taken as a precedent, it would have very serious consequences. There are a number of reasons why it is entirely proper that Members of the House should be in a position to raise such questions. I will deal first with the specifics and use those as an indication of my wider concern.
What Deputy O'Brien was seeking to do in his question was to probe a public statement made by the Minister on 25 November and elaborated on by him in this House. He sought to ascertain whether the commitment made in this House had been delivered. To suggest that the Minister does not have statutory responsibility in that area is unreal. It is unreal to suggest that, because at the time the commitment was made and the time certain trainees benefited from the extra payments, FÁS never even existed, the question can be excluded on those grounds.
The second concern we have is that the question contained within it issues of fundamental policy and funding importance and we understood that it was a fundamental principle of the Government that people who are unemployed should be encouraged to avail of any training or temporary employment opportunities that might be available to them. It is for that reason we understood the Government introduced the Jobsearch scheme. Indeed, they trumpeted their enthusiasm by encouraging people to move from unemployment into training or temporary employment opportunities. The question sought to raise the existence of serious disincentives to that. It sought to do that by focusing on the plight of some 4,000 trainees who, we say, were arbitrarily excluded from the terms of the scheme. That seems to be an issue of fundamental policy and one on which the Minister should be answerable to the House. We are concerned also because funding implications arise. What is involved is the adequacy of the funds available to the State agencies operating under the aegis of the Department of Labour to allow them to make payments which will be sufficient to ensure that there is no disincentive and it is entirely proper that the Minister should be answerable to the House on that.
There is a further reason — and I will stick to the specifics before moving to the general — why we are concerned. It seems that the question was excluded by your office, a Cheann Comhairle, in part on misleading information provided by the Department of Labour. It was misleading in the sense that your office were led to believe that the question related only to FÁS trainees, formerly AnCO trainees when, in fact, the Minister's public statement and his statement to this House had dealt with the circumstances of CERT trainees in respect of whom there had been no change in status. That is a further specific reason why we are concerned.
However, my concern goes beyond this and it is a concern that is shared by my party. We discussed it today and it is our intention not to let the matter rest. If we do not secure satisfaction here today we propose to take it further, either through the Committee on Procedure and Privileges or by tabling a Dáil motion dealing with this question. The right of Deputies to ask questions and to be informed in this area is of fundamental importance. What is involved is a central part of Government policy. The activities of FÁS in the area of training, the provision of temporary employment opportunities and job placement are absolutely central to the Government's response to unemployment and to seek to exclude this House from an opportunity to consider it is unacceptable.
It has been suggested that what happened simply followed the precedent of what was done when the Department of Posts and Telegraphs ceded responsibility for the telephone services and postal services to An Post and Telecom Éireann. That argument is, to say the least, disingenuous. The first reason why this is so is that what was involved in the case of An Post and Telecom Éireann was that the Minister and his Department ceded responsibility to two newly created semi-State bodies. What is involved in this issue is simply the transfer of responsibility from a multiplicity of State bodies to one State body. There is the question of the National Manpower Service for which there was previously direct ministerial responsibility, but that makes up a relatively small part of the package as a whole.
A distinction has to be drawn between a commercial State body and one that is engaged in the provision of services. The areas that can be exempt from parliamentary scrutiny in the case of the ESB are inherently wider than is appropriate for a service body entirely State-funded or European Community-funded and operating in an area of central importance.
I said that we regard this matter as one of fundamental importance, and that is so. If there is a change of policy and the effect of that change of policy is to exclude Deputies from pursuing questions of concern about the operation of employment and training measures, we have to respond to that and I have indicated that we are prepared to respond very forcibly. During the course of the day it has been intimated to me that what is involved may not be as all-embracing or sinister as it appeared and that what is involved are simply teething problems. If so, we would be delighted to receive reassurance on that point.
The first point I want to put to the Minister is that there is no justification for a departure from existing practice. In the past Ministers were prepared to answer, in the Dáil, questions in relation to the activities of AnCO and the Youth Employment Agency and now that those two bodies have been amalgamated and have a new letterhead there is no justification for seeking to exclude parliamentary questions. If the Minister feels that the existing practice was causing undue difficulties, we are prepared to hear him on that. We have no desire that the Minister's time and FÁS's time would be taken up in responding to questions about whether an individual applicant would go on a specific training programme or whatever. That is at one end of the scale. However, we do assert the right to ask questions about the general operations of FÁS and we will seek the support of the Chair in doing that.
If the Minister wants to make some changes in existing practices, it would be appropriate for him to discuss, perhaps, with the spokespersons from the other parties in the House, where the lines can be drawn as to what is so specific that it need not be the subject of parliamentary debate and what is sufficiently general and has sufficiently wide implications, that it is a matter that is proper to this Dáil. My party have shown that they accept the responsibilities of Opposition. We have shown that sometimes in areas that are politically difficult for us. We require that the Government accept their responsibilities, too, and we require that a government in a minority Dáil should not seek to exclude the rights Deputies have enjoyed for very many years.
