Deputy Noonan gave notice of his intention to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of the recent decision of the Labour Court indicating that it is not within the terms of the Programme for National Recovery to have local authority services performed by private interests.
Adjournment Debate. - Local Authority Service Private Contract.
(Limerick East): I thank the Chair for giving me the opportunity to raise this issue. I also thank the Minister for Finance and commiserate with him on dragging him back into the House following the long debate on the Finance Bill. I do not propose to take the 20 minutes allocated. I want to raise the issue and the questions that arise from it.
I should be grateful if the Minister would put on the record of the House the nature of the decision by the Labour Court on this issue. As I understand it, Wicklow County Council had decided that refuse would be collected in Greystones by a private contractor. They did this as a result of the general cutbacks on local authorities and specifically as a result of the cutbacks which faced Wicklow County Council. With a limited budget they could not maintain services at the level at which they had been organised and they decided in the Greystones area to hire a private contractor to do the work previously carried out by county council workers. I understand that the firm involved actually hired some of the county council workers who had been providing the service over the years and everything was going rather well. Then the ITGWU took the case to the Labour Court and I understand that the decision was made in favour of the trade union and within the context of the Programme for National Recovery.
I am looking for confirmation of the facts in the first instance because I am relying on media reports. The key factor seems to be that the Labour Court found that certain items had been agreed in the programme and that a condition of redundancy in the public service was that it would be voluntary and not in any way compulsory. Consequently when the local authority compulsorily transferred work which was traditionally the work of county council employees redundancies would inevitably follow which would appear to be made under compulsion. Is this the case?
Secondly, how widely does the precedent extend? I understand that the Minister for the Environment had suggestions that certain roads, bridges and various capital construction work within his Department would be carried out by the private sector, that one method of reducing public expenditure on capital services and providing capital infrastructure would be to bring the private sector in and allow them to build, as they did in the case of the toll bridge across the Liffey.
There were a couple of instances in the Deputy's constituency.
(Limerick East): Financial institutions expressed an interest. These suggestions were certainly there when we were in Government and I think the interest continues. Could the Minister tell me if the decision has a wider application than in regard to the collection of refuse by a county council and whether it prevents the transfer of public works to the private sector by local authorities? As a consequence of this decision, will the plans of the Minister for the Environment be discontinued?
I do not want to pursue this any further or get into the whole area of privatisation. I want a clarification of the decision and to know if the precedent extends beyond refuse collection by local authorities. I also want to know if it has implications for public expenditure.
I thank the Deputy for the opportunity of putting on record the facts as we know them.
I understand that a dispute arose recently in Wicklow county in relation to the manner in which a particular refuse collection route should be discharged. The county council had decided that this route should be contracted out to a private contractor.
The local union sought a Labour Court ruling on the matter, claiming that the proposal was contrary to clause 11 of section 2 of the Programme for National Recovery. The court ruled that it could not find any reference to privatisation of services in section 2 paragraph 11 of the programme but went on to recommend that “on industrial relations grounds, as an alternative to contracting out, the disputed route should be manned by staff redeployed from non-essential services”. It would appear accordingly that the court's recommendation was directed towards settling a particular dispute in a particular location and was not intended to endorse any principle or to set any general headline.
I understand that the county council have written to the Labour Court seeking a rehearing on the basis that the matter on which the court recommended was not before the court at the original hearing and therefore the county council did not have the opportunity to put any considerations, either written or oral, to the court on the issue. In these circumstances I think the Deputy will appreciate that I am unable to comment on the particular case until the court has responded to the county council.
As far as general issues are concerned, I think everyone in this House would accept that the Government must have the flexibility to ensure that any opportunity which exists to reduce the cost of public services, and thus reduce the burden on the taxpayer, must be carefully examined. The notion that any service at present executed by the public sector must continue to be provided by the public sector at all costs is not one to which this Government could subscribe. I fully accept that the industrial relations aspects of making any changes of this nature have to be taken into account and that the Government's commitment in the Programme for National Recovery to achieving any reduction in the number of public service employees on a voluntary basis must be honoured.
The Dáil adjourned at 8.40 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 4 May 1988.