Manpower Policy: Motion (resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Seanad Éireann notes the Government White Paper on Manpower Policy but regrets the failure of the Government to initiate an integrated manpower service on the lines recommended by the National Industrial Economic Council.— Mr. Garret FitzGerald.

Mr. McQuillan

On the last occasion this matter was before the House, a number of Senators dealt with the undesirability of having the Department of Social Welfare in a controlling position in regard to the employment exchanges. According to the NIEC Report, which I quoted at length on the previous occasion and which I do not propose to quote again, reference is made to a 1963 lecture by an officer of the Department of Social Welfare in which he pointed out that the employment exchanges were places where workers seeking employment and employers seeking workers got in touch with each other.

That is not a fact today. The employment exchanges as we know them in this country are, in the minds of workers, primarily associated with the idea of benefits, the dole, and the question of employment arises only incidentally. The Parliamentary Secretary has to get over this psychological problem—the detestation of workers for the exchanges. He is starting off under a severe handicap. He may argue that even though the Department of Social Welfare man the labour exchanges the Department are not the controlling influence.

For years, according to the officer of the Department of Social Welfare, the major function of the labour exchanges was to get employment for people. If so, they failed to do it. How does the Parliamentary Secretary propose to put across his views to the very same people now when they did not do it themselves? I cannot see how the Parliamentary Secretary has powers to force a Minister to do the job when we all know the Parliamentary Secretary is only a junior member of the Cabinet. I understand that as a junior member he is barred from Cabinet meetings.

If the Government are serious about a manpower policy, the man responsible for the control and direction of that policy should be one of the most important figures in the Cabinet. Instead of that, all a Parliamentary Secretary can do is go in on the invitation of the Cabinet to make a report, but he cannot sit in on decisions on this fundamental problem. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us—he has the goodwill of this House —how he proposes to direct this agency which at present is controlled by the Department of Social Welfare.

So far, Senators have all strongly opposed the idea of allowing the employment agency to be left in the hands of the Department of Social Welfare. There is also opposition to the idea outside. For instance, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have issued their views on this in a report dated 25th January last. They opposed the idea of setting up an agency under the Department of Social Welfare and stated they realised the administrative difficulties that could arise if the NIEC Report were adopted. Rightly, they say they are satisfied that the people in the public service do not lack the imagination and flexibility to overcome the difficulties involved.

This question of manpower policy is one that has been the subject of many investigations and discussions by European countries, members of both the Common Market and EFTA. There are a number of reports available to the Minister and to the members of this House on this question of manpower policy. I have here a copy of the OECD Report for July, 1965 which contains a special article on this question of employment and redundancy prepared by OECD personel. The heading of the article is "Public Employment Service, —Cornerstone of an Active Manpower Policy." It says:

As OECD Member governments take steps to implement an active manpower policy, their employment services are being transformed. An agency that has often been associated, in the minds of employers and employees alike, with the unemployment queue and hard-to-place workers is being called upon to expand its coverage so as to include a wide range of employees and jobs.

Even there, it is admitted in the minds of workers and employers that labour exchanges have been associated with employment queues and the dole. Many European countries and other countries have taken steps to get over that difficulty. According to this report, one widely-advocated means of improving the public image of employment services is to separate physically and, in some cases, administratively, the payment of employment benefits from unemployment activities.

There is a very interesting comment by the Social Affairs Division of OECD Manpower and directives. A number of seminars were held and the view was taken that it would be desirable to separate the functions of paying relief on unemployment from the function of providing employment. The Government should get off to a good start in this country in that regard. The position in Britain and in other countries is that they have already taken a number of steps to set up such employment agencies that work on a very comprehensive and geographical basis. The position in Britain, of course, is different from that in Ireland. Their problem, to a great extent, from now on, will be shortage of workers. Our problem will not alone be to provide work for the people who will be displaced as a result of the new Trade Agreement with Britain and, possibly later on, after we go into the EEC, but to deal with the seemingly everlasting problem of emigration.

This presents a much different problem from the British one and it is even more important for us here in Ireland to get off on the right foot as far as a manpower policy is concerned. In that regard there is a further OECD Report on what has been accomplished in Canada. Here we have something that should interest particularly our State and semi-State bodies. Canada has, according to this OECD Report, been one of the most active in dealing with manpower and social problems. A special committee of OECD examined into the Canadian experience. One of the big problems in Canada is underemployment where, during the summer season and autumn season, there is a great deal of employment but, in the winter months, according to this OECD Report, there are approximately 585,000 people losing their jobs. Consequently, there is a great deal of seasonal employment.

The Canadians have taken steps to deal with that problem. We have a similar problem here. We have it in Bord na Móna, for instance, where the peak season is reached around May and June and then from October on, the employment content goes down drastically. The ESB is another body concerned in that regard and indeed, also the Sugar Company. So far, in this country, no effort whatever has been made to put those displaced workers into other employment during the winter months. We should take immediate action in the setting up of a manpower plan.

Last year, the Federal Government in Canada spent ten million dollars in training 27,000 adults. There are special training centres for the unemployed and, during the period the unemployed are being trained—I would like the Minister to note this—they still receive unemployment benefits and, in certain cases, additional allowances as well. There is no question of workers in Canada being asked to pay for the retraining where the question of redundancy or unemployment is concerned. Further still, in Canada —this is something which should be interesting—there is a lay-off early warning system, where particular firms find the going hard, perhaps through competition or amalgamation, or, as the case will be here, through outside competition with the protective barriers removed. We must insist on early warning being brought into operation here so that the workers will have plenty of time to take advantage of whatever plans the Government have available to retrain them and to compensate them during the period when they are unemployed through no fault of their own.

The Parliamentary Secretary has referred to industrial efforts here as one of the means by which a manpower policy is being implemented. Two areas have been chosen in this regard—Waterford and Galway. While I agree with the selection, I think the problem is too urgent to justify selecting just two areas, both of which are reasonably well off at the moment, and let the remainder of the country, particularly the west of Ireland and, perhaps, down along the south coast, wait until the Government see the results of their planning in the Galway and Waterford areas. This problem of unemployment and emigration in Ireland is too serious to dilly-dally with like that—a long term wait - and - see - what - happens - in - Galway - and - Waterford outlook—before taking steps to deal with the remainder of the country. If we have to wait until those two areas are dealt with, there will be nobody left in the undeveloped counties and the Gaeltacht areas. There seems to be no feeling of urgency on the part of the Government to tackle these localities. Counties like Kerry, Clare, Donegal, Cavan and Longford are suffering grievously at the moment from emigration. It is not merely the sons and daughters who are leaving but the fathers and mothers are packing up on these small holdings, and the Government's White Paper and the NIEC Report have admitted that, by 1970, they expect to see a reduction of approximately 36,000 people in the land; in other words, a flight of 36,000 people from the land.

That is the view of the Government in planning the Second Programme for Economic Expansion, and it is also the view of the people who prepared the NIEC Report. But, to show how far the Government have realised this, I should like to quote from a speech by Dr. E.A. Attwood of An Foras Talúntais, as reported in the Irish Times of Friday, 28th January 1966. He was speaking, at a lecture, on the exodus from agriculture in the Republic which would create difficult social problems throughout the countryside. He said:

Already the rate of migration is nearly double that foreseen in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion.

It is fantastic to find that in 1965 people were leaving the land in approximately the same numbers as the Government estimated they would be in 1970.

What will the position be over the next five years? The Second Programme has been proved wrong; the NIEC people have been proved wrong and the Government's estimates have gone haywire. There is the proof. So, when we find no feeling of urgency in dealing with this, it will not be worthwhile trying to do anything about it by 1970. I should like to quote exactly what Dr. Attwood went on to say:

Migration on such a scale would create difficult social problems in the countryside; the present rate was now nearly double that foreseen in the Second Programme, and the level of the farm employment was, at this stage, very close to the expected position in 1970.

When we have that position in the country, it makes me very doubtful of statistics produced by the Government to prove how successful their Second Programme will be, and it throws doubt on the sources of income available to the people who prepared the NIEC Report.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Where did the good doctor get those statistics?

Mr. McQuillan

Does Senator Ó Maoláin challenge the figures?

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I am merely wondering, since the Senator has such regard for the statistics, where he got them?

Mr. McQuillan

I am prepared to accept them. It is serious if Dr. Attwood, who is in An Foras Talúntais, would make available figures from a source which was not reliable. Now, if he is not accurate, then we take it that the figures given by the NIEC people are and that the Government have acted on theirs. At any rate, we must find out which figures are the correct ones. I believe, judging from what I know of the position in rural Ireland, that the tempo has speeded up as far as the emigration position is concerned.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Does the Senator not know that that is happening everywhere, in every country in Europe?

Mr. McQuillan

I always attributed that kind of outlook to Deputy Childers and I did not think Senator Ó Maoláin had fallen into that weakness.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

I am sure the Senator has heard the old story: "How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paris?"

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I think it would be better if Senator McQuillan resumed his speech solo.

Mr. McQuillan

I would not be so worried if the Government tried to put industry into our towns to draw a surplus population from the farming community but the trouble here—it is not the position which exists in the other countries in Europe—is that people are leaving Ireland; they are not moving into towns, they are moving out of the country into Liverpool, Birmingham and all those other centres. So, there is no comparison between the position in Ireland and the flight from the land, and other European countries. The position is that there is a mounting rate of emigration, particularly from the rural areas.

What is the position with regard to training those people at the moment? Is any effort being made? Even in so far as vocational guidance is concerned, the position in the west is that the majority of proposals for the building of extensions to vocational schools and the construction of new vocational schools have been suspended. No effort is being made by the Government to meet the requirements as far as the training of youth is concerned; those who have to leave the country and who should be placed here. It is all right to talk about plans for the future. How soon can we see the plans implemented to stop this haemorrhage which is going on and which seems to be worsening? The Government—according to the White Paper—estimate that by 1970 there should be a total of 81,000 new jobs. The position at the moment is that since 1960 only 8,000 new jobs have been provided. Can anybody in this House suggest that we will increase that rate, judging by the present day performances? We had only 8,000 new jobs between 1960 and 1965 and, between now and 1970, we must provide approximately another 73,000 jobs. How far removed from reality are we so far as the carrying out of plans is concerned?

I do not intend to delay the House very long, but I should like to refer to something which has been set up in the poorer counties. We have a number of county development teams now functioning to examine what measures can be taken to give employment, and to improve farming conditions. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will shortly be promoted to Minister for Labour, and I hope he will take these county development teams under his wing, because they must be in a position, through the various members of the committees, to know what the manpower position is in every parish in each county. They should not work in isolation from this manpower agency for which the Parliamentary Secretary is responsible. I think they have a function to advise young people, farmers' sons and daughters in particular, about possible employment positions.

The problem which now faces the Parliamentary Secretary is how to "get to" these young people, if there is a possibility of employment here at all, and how to get them to know that there will be employment for them here before they get on the boat for Birmingham and other places. This is the major job to be tackled. I have the greatest sympathy for the Parliamentary Secretary, and I think he will do himself an injustice if he does not get more power and more responsibility.

It is stated in the White Paper, dealing with the question of redundancy that the Government have decided that the cost of a redundancy payments scheme should be met through the contributions of employers and workers. Putting it very bluntly I think that is ridiculous. I pointed out the position of the workers in Canada. They are paid while they are being re-trained, and so far as I know there is no question of asking the workers to contribute payments towards redundancy schemes. After all, it is the workers who will lose their jobs. It is bad enough for them to lose their jobs through no fault of their own, without having to pay for re-training for another post.

The Parliamentary Secretary will meet very strong opposition to this suggestion in the White Paper, and so far as that is concerned the White Paper should be scrapped. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions have emphasised their opposition to this proposal when they said they rejected the Government's proposal that the cost of the proposed redundancy payments scheme should be partly met through contributions by the workers.

As the Parliamentary Secretary knows well, such a proposition was not made in Britain or the Six Counties. I fail to see why workers in the 26 Counties should have to subscribe towards the cost of a redundancy scheme when the workers in Northern Ireland and Britain are in a different category? The principle that the Government and the employers should foot the bill has been accepted in Britain and the Six Counties. I understand that under the redundancy payments scheme which comes into operation in Britain on 6th December next, no contribution whatever is being made by the workers.

In conclusion, I should like to repeat what I said at the beginning. I wish the Parliamentary Secretary success, because in his hands to a great extent lies the future of the youth of rural Ireland. If there is to be a chance of stopping this haemorrhage of emigration and of providing work here for those who have been, as it were, indoctrinated with the idea of going abroad, from years of emigration. he must get the necessary powers from the Government if he is to achieve this worthy aim.

That brings me to the point about a Ministry of Labour which has been dealt with by a number of speakers already. The view in this House, and outside it, is that the Parliamentary Secretary's work is so important that it is beyond question that it should be handled by a man with the status of a full-blown Cabinet Minister. I hope it is not too late to make the Government see the necessity for raising the status of the Parliamentary Secretary as soon as possible.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. S. Flanagan)

First of all I should like to offer words of sincere thanks to the three Senators who have already spoken for their very kind remarks concerning myself, and for their kind good wishes. I deeply appreciate their sentiments and can only say that I shall do my humble best.

This motion gives us an opportunity —the first in either House—for a serious discussion about manpower problems. May I say that I welcome the fact that it is in the Seanad rather than the Dáil that we are having this first opportunity. With all the discussions that have taken place over the past year or so, especially, with regard to our manpower problems and our policies to deal with them, it is clear that we have general agreement about our aims, and equally clear that we have considerable disagreement about the means of achieving those aims.

May I quote the words of the United States Secretary of Labour at a conference in Washington in December, 1964? This was a seminar which was called to deal mainly with the subject of automation, but which inevitably ranged over a very much wider area. He said:

If a single theme has emerged here it is that so far as manpower policy is concerned we are all still practising empiricists. There has been repeated reminder that the stuff for syllogisms is still lacking, that experience remains a more reliable guide than logic to manpower conclusions. The semantics of the subject are still in flux. The available statistics report only that fevers are rising or falling; they say little of the causes of distress or well-feeling.

You have confirmed here the good sense of continuing to believe what we see—and of guarding against seeing only what we believe.

So I have revised my original intention. Where I had thought to chide you a little for pretending to know more than you do, my more humble approach is to ask now where it leaves the rest of us that you are sure of so little.

He then went on to suggest that there were certain important and interrelated elements in the development at that stage of a manpower programme. He said:

First, we must be willing to proceed on what seems to be the firmest ground available—and equally willing to recognise that drastic changes in course may be required. This is not easy in government which relies upon common consent. One of the paradoxes of government by the people is that people assume that the governors know more than people do. And a confession of error is always dangerous politics.

He goes on to say:

Faced with the necessity of making decisions every day which proceed from some combination of belief or disbelief in these propositions, the only effective manpower administrator is one who is ready to proceed vigorously on his best belief, and to recognise tomorrow that yesterday he was wrong. The only responsible manpower adviser is one who is willing to advance—if necessary—advice he considers 51 per cent true, and then spend tomorrow checking his figures instead of saving his face.

I welcome the opportunity of quoting that because it was suggested here by Senator O'Quigley and outside the House by many other people that the Government in announcing their intentions in the White Paper had committed themselves to a definite and irrevocable policy with regard to the various aspects of their programme. This. I assure you, is not so, and I as a humble student of manpower problems in this country wish to assure you that I am not married to any particular propositions, and that the Government are not married to particular propositions with regard to these problems and their solution but will be willing to take such steps as experience proves to be advisable.

The first matter that we had to consider was the NIEC Report followed a couple of months after my appointment in June 1965 by the publication of the interdepartmental committee on administrative arrangements for employment and manpower policy. Perhaps it is not unfair to summarise the views of Senator FitzGerald in this way, that he found the interdepartmental committee report a very spotty and in many ways illogically argued document. This I think I can accept. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed Senator FitzGerald weaving his cool analytical way through the various passages of the NIEC and the interdepartmental reports, pointing out the illogicalities, non sequiturs and so forth. I am much more concerned with policy than mere administrative arrangements. The Government in making the decisions that have so far been taken were not, I think, impressed by arguments but interested in conclusions. Therefore, perhaps it is not unfair to Senator FitzGerald to say that he and others have too often argued about administrative matters instead of coming to the real problem, which is what we are trying to do.

The Government, of course, gave serious consideration to the views both of NIEC and of the interdepartmental committee, and in particular gave serious thought to the two main matters that have been brought up here, namely, the establishment of a Department of Labour and the taking over from the Department of Social Welfare of the placement function. Theoretically, I think I can accept that the establishment of a department which would deal with all or practically all aspects of manpower problems and policy is desirable, but if we were to wait until we had created a Department of Labour we would at this particular stage have achieved absolutely nothing. Indeed, I will later on give practical proof of that.

We realise the urgency of establishing certain priorities, and in deciding how to place these priorities we were guided by social rather than political considerations. I do not wish to suggest for a moment that in taking the establishment of an industrial training authority and the preparation and publication of the redundancy payments system, we were tackling the most important aspects, but we were tackling what we thought from a social point of view were most urgently required to be tackled. It was because these were so urgent that the question of the establishment of a Department and now—I will deal with this later— with regard to the placement service and its taking over—it was in the light of this that the reports of NIEC and the committee were considered.

Another matter obviously was the question as to whether there should be an autonomous body set up or whether the manpower agency which we have created within the Department of Industry and Commerce would be better. The Government felt, and I personally feel, that while there are certain advantages in the establishment of yet another autonomous body—the obvious advantages of greater flexibility in the recruitment of staff and so forth—it would be inappropriate for the type and scope of the work involved to remove the responsibility from the political head involved and thereby to some extent remove the capacity of the Oireachtas to make him answer. The Government felt and feels that this is a matter in which ministerial control is essential, and I believe the Government are right in that.

In this connection it is interesting to note that of the three speakers who have spoken so far in this debate, Senator McQuillan and Senator FitzGerald disagreed on this matter of whether or not there should be an autonomous body. Senator FitzGerald appeared to be in favour and Senator McQuillan against.

I come now to the vexed question of the decision to leave the employment service with the Department of Social Welfare on an agency basis for the manpower authority. May I say here that the last thing that was worrying me or the Government was whether as a result of our decision civil servants would be in some way discommoded? I feel that it was a good deal simpler than that. It was again the necessity for urgency. Where this very vexed question is concerned, it can be, perhaps, summarised in this way. If we accept that in this country and in many other countries as well the image of the employment service that existed is unsatisfactory, does it necessarily follow that you must hand over the activities of the employment service to another department in order to create a better image? If so, what steps must you take to implement that decision?

In theory, I should think, it would be a better thing. In practice, to carry out that decision would be very costly and very slow. We decided, in view of the urgency involved, that we would, for the moment anyway, take a middle course, accepting, as we do, that any transfer of these functions from the Department of Social Welfare to the Department of Industry and Commerce or to a new Department of Labour would not, ipso facto, create a new image. It is not that easy to effect such a radical change in the approach of people to a particular service known for a long time.

The Government, therefore, decided that, in the interest of speed and for the other reasons I have mentioned, the Department of Social Welfare should be asked to undertake the task of expanding the replacement service, and in order to try to change the outlook of people to what they regard as the dole office, we shall set up in the employment exchanges a separate placement office which will be manned by a placement officer, so that while we will not be creating, for the moment anyway, physically separate placement offices from the existing employment exchanges, we will be refurbishing the exchanges and providing a separate office for placement purposes.

I agree that this decision is open to adverse criticism. Sometimes, perhaps, the best is the enemy of the good. Perhaps if we were to approach all these problems and their solutions on the basis that we should not do anything until we had what was theoretically the best organisation and administration structures, then we would be open to very much more severe adverse criticism. I hope it is not unfair to Senator FitzGerald to say that in his approach I do not think he takes sufficient regard of the fact that speed was and remains such an important consideration to us that, as the US Secretary of Labour said, we must take decisions in the light of our best as of now, with the determination that we are not wedded to our decisions —that they will be changed or adjusted in the light of experience.

Indeed, my short term as Parliamentary Secretary has proved how easy talk is and how difficult it is to achieve action, and I am sure that Senator FitzGerald, who was in on the ground floor of the discussions in regard to redundancy, will share my feeling of frustration that it should take a further nine months of talk and that the talking period with regard to the redundancy scheme is not yet over and apparently will not conclude for another month or six weeks.

I have indicated elsewhere what are the main lines of the redundancy proposals as we submitted them some time ago to the representatives of the employers and the trade unions. Again, I should remind the House that our conditions are not the same—in many respects, they are totally dissimilar— as conditions in other countries. Indeed, this is true of our manpower problems generally, because they vary in the first instance from the employment situation in the country concerned and, obviously, vastly different problems arise in a country which has full employment from a country that has under-employment and, again, from a country that has serious unemployment.

With regard to our redundancy programme, we felt and still feel that while it is a departure from the system which has recently been introduced in Britain, to ask the worker to contribute a small proportion towards the central fund is not unreasonable in the light of conditions obtaining here. This particularly applies to manufacturing industry because of the fact that we will be facing greater and greater pressure in an ever more competitive field. The individual contributions from workers will be very small and the employer will, in the first instance anyway, have to meet the full cost of the lump sum, but we regard the weekly payments as being essentially more important than the lump sum and we have so devised the scheme that we hope to have an average of 12 weeks or so during which the worker will get 80 per cent, roughly, of his previous earnings during the time when he will be retrained for further employment either in a branch of an existing industry or in other work.

I know that this decision will come in for heavy attack, particularly from the Labour Party, but I hope it will be accepted by the main Opposition Party and that the reality of our conditions here will be accepted as justifying some departure from redundancy systems working elsewhere. Indeed, if it goes to that, the argument that a particular system of redundancy and training operates in Britain, Canada and the US, but is not proposed for this country does not hold up.

I was asked about a manpower forecasting service and here I regret to say I have run into serious staffing trouble, so much so that I think this might be an appropriate time to refer to Senator O'Quigley's admonition that I should not allow myself to be gobbled up by fearsome bureaucrats. The truth is that one half of my manpower staff is visible to this House at the moment. The other half is, I think, located somewhere near Santry looking for a statistician. He has been offered two leprechauns and a crock without any gold in it but so far he has not found any staff whatever or even a budding statistician. This being the spring of the year, that looks rather unpromising.

This is a very serious situation. I think it is true to say that while our problems in this particular field are acute other countries who have a need for statisticians are encountering the same difficulties.

Business suspended at 1 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.

Mr. S. Flanagan

Before we adjourned, I had dealt briefly with the main point in regard to our redundancy proposals, which has been the subject of attack, namely, the proposal of asking the worker to contribute some small amount towards the fund. In that connection, I should like to point out that all the measures we are taking are designed for the future of the worker and that, apart from this tiny contribution, either the State in the main or the employer will bear the entire cost.

With regard to the incidence of redundancy which is likely to occur, here again, I can only depend on the CIO Report which estimated that the figure would be likely to be approximately 11,000 in industry, if the necessary adaptation measures were taken. They pointed out as well that a decline in employment would be affected by other matters, such as early retirement, normal wastage, etc., and they pointed out that their figures were based on an anticipated net increase in industrial employment. It has been suggested that this anticipated increase in industrial employment has not, in fact, taken place, but this is not so. It remains to be seen whether or not the growth in employment will reach the target figure of 86,000 by 1970.

I suppose it is relevant also to mention in connection with this that the recent conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement with Great Britain does not appear likely to affect these figures or estimates to an appreciable extent because the forecast was made at the time in anticipation of adaptation measures with a view to moving into free trade being necessary. One difference, of course, the conclusion of the Free Trade Agreement makes is that the uncertainty which prevailed throughout the country with regard to the future, before the signing of the Agreement, is now at an end. I should hope and, indeed, I believe, there will be a marked intensification of effort to achieve maximum competitiveness in industry generally to meet the challenge ahead.

When I mentioned a few moments ago that the State would be bearing almost all the cost of the measures we would take, I come, logically, to the Industrial Training Bill. This Bill, as the House knows, has already been introduced in the Dáil and it is hoped that the Second Reading will take place in approximately four or five weeks' time. I feel, therefore, both as regards our proposal for redundancy and industrial training, and retraining generally, that a full scale discussion on them at this stage would be somewhat premature. I will be coming back, of course, to this House with both Bills, after they have passed through the Lower House but the industrial training proposals are, of course, central in our policy. In the discussions in the Dáil—such as we had, and they were very limited—it appeared to me that the Labour Party, in particular, refused to face the reality of change and I do not think they are doing a service to the people in this respect. The fact of change is with us and we do not have to rely on statisticians or forecasters but, on the experience of things happening before our eyes.

So far as I am concerned in these changes, whether they involve a movement from the agricultural to the industrial field on the part of individuals, or movement from one skill to another within industry, or whatever type of movement is involved, I must accept that this process is taking place and will continue to take place on an accelerated scale. I must face the consequences of that by providing for the minimum amount of disturbance for the individuals and families likely to be affected. We will, in time, establish a central training school. We will obviously have to expand existing vocational facilities. We will have to gear our educational programme to take account of the changes in the structure of employment, both inside and outside industry. These tasks will be the primary tasks of the autonomous body, An Comhairle Traenála, the industrial training authority, we propose to establish to implement the Industrial Training Act.

On the subject of vocational guidance, in the first place, this is obviously primarily a matter for the Department of Education, and in the second place, it can be effective only to a limited extent. There are obviously limitations to the practical effects of vocational guidance, because it is one thing to advise, and another to succeed in getting the co-operation of the people involved. No practical progress has been made in establishing a career guidance service so far, but the Manpower Authority is in close touch with the Department of Education in regard to it. We recognise the need for aptitude testing and, indeed, we should like to have an industrial psychologist as well to help in providing the necessary guidance facilities. Here again it will take time to put our ideas into practice.

So far, I have dealt with the major points that have been raised in the House. One was the contentious decision to leave the expansion of the placement service to the Department of Social Welfare, and I have made the point that while it is not perhaps the most theoretically satisfactory solution, it appears to us to be the most immediately practical one. In that regard may I say that the success or failure of our efforts in conjunction with the Department of Social Welfare to provide a better placement service, must be considered in the light of two points? The first is that the number of people who are actually placed in jobs through employment services in any country is not higher than approximately 35 per cent and is as low as 15 per cent. While the improvement of the service is certainly vital, it is vital only in that we can never hope to place more than 35 per cent, or at most 40 per cent, of the workers in jobs through this medium.

The fact that it is vital is illustrated by the example taken from a typical American industrial city. I do not suggest that a comparison lies, but I merely give it as an example of a placement service in operation. In this city it was discovered that if the workers could be placed seven days earlier than was the experience, it would represent a saving of 70,000 dollars in a year, in a comparatively small city. It would, of course, obviously mean also that the workers involved would work an extra week and be paid for it.

The second background point I should like to mention is that the element of success or failure of our efforts to improve the placement service will not depend so much on whether the director is the Manpower Authority or the Department of Social Welfare, or any other Department— and to a limited extent only will depend on the calibre of the new staff that will be recruited for placement purposes—but on the co-operation or lack of co-operation of the individual workers and the individual employers, and of the employers' representatives and the trade unions representing the workers.

May I use this opportunity to appeal to both the representatives of the employers and the representatives of the workers, on the one hand, and the employers and workers individually, on the other, to try to forget the past record and the image of the dole office, to put them out of their minds and to accept that whether the machinery is or is not the best, we are genuinely trying to provide a new improved and expanded placement service for the benefit alike of employers and workers? May I ask for co-operation and indulgence in that effort?

I agree with Senator McQuillan when he says that an early warning system is vital. It is vital not merely from the economic point of view, but also from the human point of view. It has been suggested that a manpower policy is really an intellectual exercise. Surely it is not an intellectual exercise that a man should suddenly find himself without a job, and find that he has to leave his home, his family, and his surroundings, and move to another country, or to a different part of his own? Surely it is not an intellectual exercise for a man or woman to find himself or herself, perhaps at the age of 40 or so, having to change careers? Surely it is not an intellectual exercise that a firm or an entire industry should close down?

Indeed, it is essential for a real understanding of manpower problems that we should all realise that it is not the power but the man that is our concern, that when we discuss administrative and other arrangements for implementing a manpower policy, our discussions, our policies, our legislation, and so forth, are all aimed at improving the lot and the opportunities of individual human beings. Sometimes one hears the expression "the labour market", as if labour were a commodity, which it is not. Sometimes too much technical talk about manpower problems appears to submerge the most important fact, that it is the improvement of the lot of the individual that is our concern. I think that tackled from this point of view, and this point of view being kept in mind always, one will reduce the vast complexities of this subject to reality and simplicity. I have not, I must confess, made as much progress as I would have liked, and I am sure the House will appreciate that some of this delay is not my fault. It is not within my power to prevent.

There is one other matter I should like to mention, that is, the vital importance of housing in the implementation of an effective manpower policy. I mention it for this reason, that some of the Senators who spoke appeared to be anxious that I would take over some responsibility, or that the Manpower Authority would take over responsibility directly, in regard to housing. This is an honour that I must decline. My hands are already full and will be full for a considerable time to come, but, that apart, the crucial importance of housing is recognised by the Government, especially where the mobility of workers is concerned, but the actual provision of the houses is a matter primarily for the local authorities and in certain instances also for the National Building Agency under the general control of the Minister for Local Government. It is obviously our deep concern to establish and to keep very close liaison with the Department of Local Government, and, indeed, by the use of forecasting and other aids available to us, to advise the Department of Local Government and local authorities of the likely requirements in various areas, but I do not think that now or at any stage in the future, it will be open to us to issue directions, but merely recommendations, on housing matters.

There are many other aspects of manpower on which I have not touched at all. Especially is this so in regard to technicians and technologists. I can only say with regard to this that with the limited resources I have at the present time, it is not possible for us to tackle more than what we have tried to do up to this time. That is not to say that we do not appreciate the importance of the technician, the engineer, the expert and the technologist. We do, but we feel, as I said earlier, that this is a matter of priority. Certain essentials, such as the establishment of an industrial training authority and the provision of redundancy payments are practical priorities.

I will conclude by saying again how grateful I am to the House for their kind expressions of goodwill towards me. This is really not a political subject. When I say that I mean that it is not a Party political subject. The problems here in many respects provide a common ground for all political Parties. It is with some regret that I noticed on one or two occasions both Senator FitzGerald and Senator O'Quigley lapsing into Fine Gael propaganda. I use the word "lapse" because whenever I hear what I describe as Fine Gael propaganda from Senator FitzGerald, I feel reminded of the late Ian Fleming, who felt obliged when writing his Bond books to shove in an occasional bit about women. They were amusing interludes but they were usually irrelevant and showed that he had not much practical experience of his subject. I feel—and I say this with the greatest respect to my friend, Senator FitzGerald—that when he introduces Fine Gael talk, as I so describe it, he leaves his brilliant analytical mind behind him. Indeed, when Senator O'Quigley injects some reference to the Control of Manufactures Acts, I feel that he is leaving history behind him.

We will continue to do our best with what are obviously limited resources, and on the pragmatic basis I have mentioned earlier. I again assure the House that neither the Government nor myself are committed to any particular line in regard to any particular component of our policy. Experientia docet: we will be guided by our experience and will not hesitate to change, even though, as the Secretary of Labour of the United States said, this is not a very popular political exercise. It is obviously more important, whatever the political consequences, that we should be prepared to act and even if, for instance, our forecasts turn out to be completely wrong, it does not absolve us from the obligation of making them. If our decision to leave placement with the Department of Social Welfare turns out to be misguided, that does not mean that our motives for doing it originally were suspect.

If it turns out that a Minister for Labour is necessary, I am sure the Government will recognise this fact when the time will come, but we are only in the infancy in regard to this and are not alone in this being so. At my inaugural meeting 21 years ago, when the Taoiseach, then the Minister for Industry and Commerce, honoured me with his presence, he said something that has always remained in my mind since. He said: "It is a lawyer's duty to take a conclusion and force the facts to meet it. It is a politician's duty to assemble the facts and allow them to build themselves up to their own conclusion." I hope that I will tackle this problem as a politician rather than as a lawyer and that I will assemble the facts and not be afraid to accept whatever conclusions they produce.

Professor Dooge

This is an important topic, one that will be of greater and greater importance as the years go by. It is one which I have taken a great deal of interest in, as the Seanad knows to its tedium. However, I do not wish to speak on the subject at length today because my views on it, on manpower and the need for a manpower policy and the scope of such a policy, were given in this House at considerable length in July last.

On that occasion I put forward the reasons why it was an absolute essential: that if we were to maintain at one and the same time our economic growth, a reasonable level of employment and stable prices, this could only be done if we had a manpower policy worthy of the name. On that occasion I argued also in some detail that this manpower policy must be wide in scope, that it must embrace many functions of the planning type, many functions of placement, many functions of training. A manpower policy, I endeavoured to show at that time, is not something like moving on a narrow front or on two or three narrow fronts. It is something that has to be done in many directions and in many parts of the economy.

The third general line of argument I used then was that there was no hope of success, as hope of achieving our economic aims through a manpower policy unless that policy was integrated, unless it was effective, unless it was positive. The motion before us today arises from the Government's White Paper on Manpower Policy. There is nothing in the Government's three and a half page White Paper to alter any of the views I expressed to the Seanad last July and accordingly I do not consider it necessary to go over those arguments.

I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary when he says that a detailed discussion of the manpower policy now before the House would be best when we get the legislation which has been promised on industrial training, the legislation in regard to redundancy and resettlement. However, while we await this necessary and urgent legislation, the present debate gives us an opportunity to do several things. It gives us an opportunity to comment on the White Paper, on its contents and on what it omits. It gives us an opportunity to clarify, or attempt to clarify, certain points in the White Paper. It also gives us an opportunity to make suggestions on the implementation of the White Paper.

In his speech to which we listened today, the Parliamentary Secretary once again demonstrated that he has a firm grasp of the essentials of this problem and I wish to pay a tribute to him for the way in which he is tackling the difficult job he has been given. He won our further sympathy today by the manner in which he introduced this topic, saying that to him it was preferable to have this debate in the Seanad rather than in the Dáil and he further endeared himself to us by referring to the House of the Oireachtas which he adorns, as the as the Lower House, in the manner of a Senator born. So, in his approach, in his phraseology, the Parliamentary Secretary has indeed spoken almost like a Senator manque. In so far as he has taken the high line of the Upper House in his objective discussion of this problem, the line which Senators always adopt of a non-partisan point of view, he is entitled to our congratulations. I think the very least tribute I can pay to him is to discuss this matter on the same level and say precisely where I disagree with his diagnosis of the problem.

If the Parliamentary Secretary had not spoken at such length today, there would have been a tendency to say: "Oh, just one more speech by a Government spokesman talking about manpower." Certainly, from the manner in which the Parliamentary Secretary approached the subject today, there is no complacency on his part. It is apparent that he has no preconceived notions on the subject. He has advertised that he is open to conconversion and it is our duty to convert him.

I wish to divide the comments I have to make into a discussion on what is commendable in the White Paper, on what is ambiguous and on what is disappointing in the White Paper. Firstly, what is commendable? We must be thankful there is a White Paper at all and here I am very open to the temptation, and the very real danger, of disappointing the Parliamentary Secretary by lapsing into what he may regard as Fine Gael propaganda. Nevertheless, even at the risk of paining him in this manner, I feel I must state, not for the first time but indeed what I have stated many times before, that while we agree with him that a manpower policy is a matter of urgency, perhaps this is not the right way to say it. Perhaps it is better to say that the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary now agree with us. I have said that the Government, in omitting a manpower policy from the Second Programme, made a blunder of the first order. I said that when the Second Programme appeared. I said it on behalf of the Fine Gael Party whose attitude it was at the time that here was a fundamental weakness in the Second Programme, a weakness that imperilled that Programme for every month it was left uncorrected. It is, then, commendable that we have a White Paper at all.

It is to be welcomed that the Government have produced proposals in regard to manpower policy even at this time. However, let us not forget that they did this three years after an OECD ministerial statement to which we were a party had clearly set out that if the OECD target of increasing by 50 per cent was to be achieved, it could only be done with the help of a manpower policy. Lest I pain the Parliamentary Secretary too grievously I shall leave that point.

It is also commendable that in the White Paper the manpower policy proposed by the Government was of wide scope. In paragraph 4 of the White Paper, the scope of a manpower policy as envisaged by the Government is laid down. It is not as wide as I should like to see it. However, we must not cavil too much at this. In regard to the scope which is there, it is commendable, if perhaps short of what we had looked for. Again, in regard to the key matter of organisation, while we may differ on details—I will discuss those afterwards—we must be thankful that the Government have seen the need for a central agency and the need for placing this under an energetic, active and intelligent political chief.

As I say, we are not satisfied that the Government have realised fully the need for integration and, indeed, the Government's failure to see this was what prompted the motion we are discussing today. Nevertheless, we should be thankful they have gone as far as they have. Judging by some of the earlier reports we had from official sources on manpower policy we might have been left to the mercy of coordination by interdepartmental committees.

I should like to turn to the few points which I think are ambiguous in the White Paper. I should like to draw them to the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary so that he could, on some occasion, clarify them. One of the problems he faces—and he faces many—is that of public relations. It is necessary for him to get over to the people concerned in industry, in organised labour, in education and to the public generally, exactly what is involved. If those of us who have studied this subject find certain things to be ambiguous in the White Paper, I think it may well be that the members of the general public may take away a completely wrong impression of what is concerned.

In regard to this question of possible ambiguities, I do not want to enter into a detailed discussion but there are just a few points I should like to raise. Firstly, it is not at all clear from the White Paper, and neither is it clear, indeed, from what the Parliamentary Secretary has said today, what the Manpower Agency intends to do in regard to vocational guidance. There is a reference in the White Paper to vocational guidance but it is not at all clear whether the Manpower Agency intends to take any initiative in this regard. It is not at all clear whether the Parliamentary Secretary is taking the viewpoint, which was taken by the interdepartmental committees, that vocational guidance is largely a matter for the schools and largely a matter for the school-leavers. Nothing is further from the truth and nothing is further out of harmony with the approach needed in regard to manpower policy.

We are not merely concerned, in this country, with the education and training of new workers. If we are to survive in the 1970s we must transform the whole of the work force. We must not only transform those who are now entering the work force but we must transform those who have entered it with inadequate education, entered it with inadequate training and entered it with no vocational guidance. It is necessary to re-allocate the members of our work force to jobs more appropriate for them. If we look on vocational guidance and career guidance as something to be done in the last few years of school, I think we will have missed completely the importance of vocational guidance in manpower policy.

I will merely mention in regard to this—I have mentioned it in the House before—that in Sweden, which for years has been active and successful in the matter of manpower policy, the vocational guidance officers deal with more cases of adult workers already working than they do of school-leavers. If you think of vocational guidance as something merely for the schools, and something on which the Parliamentary Secretary and his agency have to prod the Department of Education, you neglect one of the essential sectors in manpower policy. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to rethink his attitude in regard to this as revealed by what he said to us today, when he spoke of getting in touch with the Department of Education as to what was to be done in regard to vocational guidance.

It may well be, since we have no vocational guidance to any extent, that a start should be made in the schools but I am not convinced of this. There is a need for vocational guidance in regard to the problems of redundancy, and in regard to the problems of retraining because if we are to retrain redundant workers, we should not merely retrain them without reference to what their aptitudes are. We should not seek to retrain them merely on the basis of what they have been doing because if we admit the need for vocational guidance in the schools today, if we think this is a necessary thing, then we admit we have a working force which was recruited without the benefit of this necessary school guidance programme.

If it is necessary now to put people in right jobs in the future, it was necessary in the past and to retrain people and adapt them on the basis of existing employment is to adopt them on what may well be a serious misallocation of our labour resources. As I say, what is in the White Paper here, and what the Parliamentary Secretary has said, are ambiguous. So far as I read it, it is disturbing to me and I wish the Parliamentary Secretary would think seriously on this particular point.

Continuing on what is ambiguous in the White Paper, I should like to refer to the method of financing the retraining. Paragraph 8 of the White Paper says that the Exchequer will contribute but this could mean anything. Is it to contribute to the major part of it? Is it to contribute only notionally? It would be a good thing for the further discussion of this matter if the Parliamentary Secretary could, at some time, indicate what the magnitude of this contribution will be and what the proportion will be. It would enable those of us who are trying to get our ideas into shape in regard to this to appreciate what the Government intend. It may well be that the Parliamentary Secretary will not be in a position to do this until he introduces the actual legislation on retraining, but I think it would be helpful.

Also in paragraph 8 of the White Paper there is an ambiguity in regard to the relationship of the new industrial training authority to the Manpower Agency and to the educational authorities. I think the White Paper would have been better, and would have helped in a public discussion of this matter, if the relationship between these various authorities had been spelled out somewhat more clearly. Is the new training authority to be the old Ceárd Comhairle, somewhat larger in that there would be representation from industries, the trade unions and education, or is it to have a broader representation? Are there to be Government nominees, other than representatives nominated by industry, education and by the training authorities?

Mr. S. Flanagan

Just the smaller group.

Professor Dooge

In other words, there will only be people nominated by industry, by the trade unions and the Department of Education. It seems to me that, in this case, we are looking at training from a very narrow viewpoint. We are proposing here to hand over training to this autonomous body and to leave it without the advice of people which it might well have. It is rather difficult to understand exactly what the intentions of the Government and of the Parliamentary Secretary are in this regard. What are the arguments for making this an autonomous body? It is not clear here from the White Paper, and I think it is a point on which the Parliamentary Secretary might well inform the public somewhat more. If these things had been outlined in the White Paper at the time it was published, it would have led to better public understanding and would have assisted members of the Oireachtas when they came to debate these particular matters.

Going on to paragraph 9 of the White Paper; again, I think there is a lack of clarity in regard to the redundancy and resettlement payments. We find here ominous words; that the legislation is being prepared by the Departments of Industry and Commerce and Social Welfare. Are these resettlement and redundancy payments to be made at the Social Welfare office?

Mr. S. Flanagan

Yes.

Professor Dooge

This, of course, is what I feared and all hopes that something might be salvaged from the disastrous decision to leave placement in the labour exchanges are gone. Apparently now the position is that not only will placement be done at the labour exchanges—these labour exchanges which have never got away from their origin of having been set up by a Poor Law Commission and which have shown their parentage right down the 50 years since—in a repainted room in one corner of the building——

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

We hope it will be repainted.

Professor Dooge

"Refurbished" was the word the Parliamentary Secretary used, and we hope the Board of Works will include paint in that. It is most unfortunate that not only will people be interviewed for placement purposes but, also, that payments will be made there. This, I think, robs us of all hope of what the Parliamentary Secretary described as a new image. I am afraid the image would take a very long time to change in this regard. Here again, I must appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary, having taken deep draughts of the rarefied upper air of this House, to go back and think about this particular problem again. Whatever about a person interviewing a placement officer, it is absolutely disastrous that any payment should be made in the labour exchanges. It would be better if this were done in some other way, be it more cumbersome administratively. It would be better if these payments were made by drafts on the post office, or something like that. The objection to the labour exchanges made by the NIEC, the objection which has been made by the expert bodies in other countries, is that these were places where the dole was paid out and it is because they were places where the dole was paid out that they were not suitable in the new manpower approach. If we are to continue to make these payments there — what is it? It is another sort of dole. We will not be able to get away from that. If you pay money across the counter, if you give a man a chit in a room in that building, you will never get the smell of dole off the resettlement and redundancy grants. This is really the key issue on which we still find ourselves in disagreement with the Parliamentary Secretary.

I might comment here that the Parliamentary Secretary said that speakers on this topic, like Senator FitzGerald, seemed to be talking a lot about administrative details and not concerned with the positive things which the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary were trying to do. Of course, we are talking about details: we talked about principles for three years and now the Government agrees with the principles we were advocating. We are now talking about what we think are the best ways to implement those principles, to achieve those objectives, and, as eventually the Government were converted to this point of view with regard to the principles, we hope they will also be converted with regard to what are the proper means.

Of course, I have now passed from what is ambiguous in the White Paper to what is disappointing. The first point which is disappointing is the failure completely to integrate. We have a Manpower Agency; we have a central authority, so central, indeed, that it can be housed in one room; but we have also, in regard to placement, the Department of Social Welfare and its network of agencies, and to this point I will return later. The manpower agency has its advisory committee but we have also this autonomous authority.

I spoke at great length last July about proposal which has been made by interdepartmental committees concerning what should be the machinery in regard to manpower. On that occasion I gave the reasons why I thought these interdepartmental committees had made a mistake by starting with the problem of training, thinking of institutions for training, and then tagging on the other things as they went along. I do not intend to go over that ground again but I do think we have here a Manpower Agency, with its advisory committee; we have the Department of Social Welfare; and we have the Department of Education also in regard to vocational guidance. We have a new autonomous training body and we have the existing training authority, and I thought that here there could have been more integration.

I should like to say that co-ordination in matters such as this is just not good enough. I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary will need conversion to this point. He expressed here today his disappointment at not having got more done since his appointment than he has managed to achieve and he said the Seanad would appreciate that this was not his fault. Of course, we know it was not his fault; we appreciate that only too well, and this is why we are making the arguments for further integration. The Parliamentary Secretary has not achieved as much as he had hoped because he was given powers only to co-ordinate and not powers to integrate. He has not achieved as much as he hoped because he is left with a tiny staff to do everything, to provide initiative, while the people whom he is attempting to co-ordinate have gone through the necessary steps to provide all the inertia necessary. The Parliamentary Secretary has indeed our sympathy because of the fact that, even though he has tried, he has not been able to achieve more. That is why I said last July, when he commenced his task, that in regard to manpower, co-ordination would not work and integration was the only solution. That is why the motion we are discussing reads that we welcome the manpower policy but regret the lack of integration which was advocated in the NIEC Report. We were very careful not to say "advocated by the Fine Gael Party", lest anyone should take offence.

When one talks of what is disappointing, one comes back again and again to the question of the placement service. One must go beyond talking of what is disappointing. One is tempted to talk of what well might be disaster in this case. What defence does the Parliamentary Secretary put up? He reasonably and eloquently says that something had to be done in a hurry. Surely the question is not to do something in a hurry just for the sake of doing something, and surely the question is that we must do the right thing, even if we lose a little time in finding out the right road to travel? Surely that is better than galloping off down the wrong road and finding afterwards that we have to retrace our steps, or that the road we have taken is ten miles longer. We cannot make a virtue of urgency. I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary that there is urgency in regard to this matter. I have always maintained there is urgency, but there is urgency to do the right thing. There is no merit in getting off at a fast pace on the wrong foot.

In regard to the decision to leave the placement service in refurbished rooms in corners of the labour exchanges, all opinion is against the Government, and against the Parliamentary Secretary, except that of two interdepartmental reports. Indeed, we may leave it to the expert historians to determine whether these are two independent reports or whether one might be considered as manuscript A and the other as manuscript B, with a large portion of manuscript B obviously founded on manuscript A.

There is no use in going any further in discussing this here today. I gave my views in this regard last July and Senator FitzGerald analysed these two reports in introducing this motion. All we can say is that we hope we are wrong — and that is sincere — because we feel so strongly on this point that if we are right, the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government have started off disastrously, and have started moving in the wrong direction.

The Parliamentary Secretary said it would take a long time and a lot of money to set up a new service. God knows, it would be time well spent and money well spent, because our conviction is that it will have to be done some time. The separation will have to be made, if it is not made now, and not only will it take more money, but possibly more time, to make the separation when eventually the failure of the present policy becomes apparent.

Nothing in the Government's White Paper, and nothing in the Parliamentary Secretary's speech today, I am sorry to say, lessens in any respect my deep disappointment at the decision that was made to leave the placement service with the Department of Social Welfare. This is not a matter of drawing out on paper some sort of a formal management scheme. It is not a matter of saying we must have so many branch offices and that there are the exchange offices belonging to the Department of Social Welfare — this, I think, is the key point — but whether the workers who will be concerned with this matter will view the activities of the Parliamentary Secretary's agency as something new, as a new hope and a new departure, or whether they will look at it merely as an extension and a logical continuation of something which they have come to despise, something they have come to regard as offering no hope, and something which has failed utterly in the past to do what the Parliamentary Secretary hopes to do, that is, to realise that labour is not a commodity, and that the essential point is the dignity of the individual.

No matter what it cost, it would have been very worthwhile to start off and make a new break here. It would be difficult to create a new image, but I feel it will be impossible to create that new image within the buildings of the present labour exchanges. The Government and the Parliamentary Secretary have made a decision not to do what is difficult, but to try to do what is impossible. I think that in that they have made a wrong decision.

These then are the chief points in the White Paper which I found worthy of comment from the point of view of whether they were welcome, ambiguous or disappointing. The great disappointment, of course, is the placement service. The Parliamentary Secretary indicated that the decision made was to take a middle course between what was clearly desirable and what he considered possible from the point of view of administrative arrangements and cost. May I remind the Parliamentary Secretary that proverbial wisdom tells us that to take a middle course may land us between two stools? I think this may well be what will happen in this respect.

As this motion indicates, we are gravely concerned about this matter. We will continue to press that the manpower policy be actively pursued and in this I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary will be in disagreement with us. He realises, as we realise, that we are entering a completely new world from the economic and industrial point of view. Either we adopt the necessary measures and the necessary techniques for this new world, or we perish. There is no way out. It may be a slow and a lingering death, but the end will be the same. Unless we wholeheartedly adopt a manpower policy and all it connotes, we will not manage to survive in the economic world of the 1970s. So we will continue to press for an integrated manpower policy, an active manpower policy, and a positive manpower policy in order that we may survive.

The Parliamentary Secretary is equally convinced of this and it was, indeed, refreshing to find that there was no note of complacency in his speech today. I would warn him that complacency is a very infectious disease, and some of his colleagues appear to be somewhat heavily infected. I would urge him to continue along the lines he has indicated to us here today, and to realise the importance of his manpower policy being wide in its scope. I know that it is difficult for him to produce a wide manpower policy because of the peculiar staff difficulties, but these have to be faced. It has to be realised that if he fails to recruit the necessary staff to carry out this job, the consequences are appalling, and so the situation must be faced, not by asking the question: "Can we recruit the expert staff that is needed at the rates which the Department of Finance has already approved?" The question has to be approached from the point of view that we face disaster if we do not have an active manpower policy and that we cannot have an active manpower policy without experts of various types, that these experts are in world short supply, and that we have to bid in the world market for these people. The Department of Finance has to be told that unless we are prepared to bid in the world market for these people and to pay what is the ruling market price for bringing an expert of this type to this country, then we will have no manpower policy and, indeed, everything else will fail.

The final point I should like to touch on is one to which the Parliamentary Secretary referred in conclusion. He said that because of the many difficulties, because of the fact that he was short of staff and could not do everything at once, he has to leave aside such important problems as the question of technicians and the question of technologists. In regard to the comparison between this and other countries against which we will compete in the 1970s in regard to our exported goods, our greatest handicap is our lack of trained technicians. This indeed has come up every time anyone started to investigate this problem. It emerges again in the recent report on investment in education, where in the chapter concerned with manpower, there is a whole section in regard to technicians, the only thing which this investigating team took out specially, because, of course, like every other group that started to investigate, they found this problem facing them. Here again I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to adopt his mantle of urgency. To postpone this matter is, I think, to handicap our industry in the 1970s. Something must be done, not some time but right now.

I have a suggestion to make to the Parliamentary Secretary in this regard. He says that he finds he is unable to tackle this within his agency at the moment. I think it should be possible for the Parliamentary Secretary and his manpower agency to tackle the question of technicians and technologists in conjunction with the professional bodies who have been concerned about this problem for the past five or ten years and who have, indeed, made many preliminary studies in regard to it.

In particular, I can speak unreservedly for the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, who have a special committee on the education and training of technicians. I can speak also unreservedly for Cumann na n-Innealtóirí who have worked on this problem for many years. Both these professional bodies would be only too willing to work with the Manpower Agency in regard to this particular matter. The Parliamentary Secretary is aware that they have done useful work in highlighting some of the chief problems in this regard. I think that here is room for experimentation. The Parliamentary Secretary could make a new departure in this country. In the situation where he has not the specialist staff within his own Department, he could call on the expert part-time assistance of these people who know the problems from the user point of view. It is by approaches of this sort that we may be able to tackle some of our problems.

Having said that, I must say that some of these bodies have indicated in the past their willingness to work on matters such as this. They are only amateurs, and amateurs can never do as good a job as can be done by the professional, but where there has been co-operation, it has worked extremely well. For example, it is known more accurately in regard to engineers what are our requirements and what our supply will be in the 1970s than for any other category. This came about because Cumann na n-Innealtóirí decided that they wanted to know, and having done so, they discussed the matter with the Central Statistics Office and it was arranged that a special census of engineers in the country would be taken. The results of this are extremely valuable. This sort of co-operation between a Government Department and an expert group in the community is something which is not only valuable in order to do a job which requires to be done but is a socially healthy thing. It would be extremely healthy that groups such as these in the community should be brought into co-operation with the Manpower Agency, so that if the Parliamentary Secretary were to adopt an approach of this type, not only would he be getting his job done but he might be making a real contribution to a desirable form of social development.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I will bring the Senator's suggestion to both interests and will contact them immediately.

Professor Dooge

I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that the replies will be all that he could hope for. It is by approaches like this, by the unorthodox, that the Manpower Agency is going to work. If the Parliamentary Secretary attempts to tackle the monumental task he faces by orthodox means, I think the weapons put in his hand will prove all too weak. It is by the unorthodox, by continually taking the initiative, that he will tackle this problem, or not at all.

I conclude by wishing the Parliamentary Secretary every good fortune in the job he has tackled, and an absolute conversion on the subject of the placement authority.

Mr. Brosnahan

The ground has been very well covered, comprehensively covered, and I shall refer to only one aspect of the problem. I was rather disappointed at the Parliamentary Secretary's approach to the question of career guidance. He stated that it was mainly a matter for the Department of Education and that this type of service was of limited value, because a person might be advised on a career but might not accept that advice.

I do not accept the second statement there at all as being the correct situation. Follow-up services in countries where there is a system of education guidance prove clearly that those who have received advice are far happier in their positions, as it was established that they had an aptitude and an interest in the type of occupation that they selected, whereas here in Ireland entry into employment is entirely haphazard and fortuitous. It is merely a matter of chance. I know it as a teacher teaching a certain age-group for many, many years. I have immense sympathy with children and parents. Children have no idea where they are going. I have seen them studying and going for the Primary Certificate on 8th June, for the entrance examination to various technical schools and sitting for the entrance examinations for several secondary schools, within a matter of weeks. There is a different type of examination in each case and you can have very different results. The consequence is that the pupil can get completely different marks, and you have even cases of results with something like 80 per cent in the primary school examination and something like 45 per cent in the vocational examination. It is completely misleading to the people selecting those children.

I have great sympathy for the children in their state of confusion and for the parents who come to the door asking the teacher what her lad is suited for. The teacher, of course, has not got the training, the expertise, to advise them. In the North and in England there is a career master attached to all the big schools and he has a performance card to indicate the child's ability from the first day the child went to school. The career master has studied the child's aptitude and his performance and is able to say the child will be suited to a certain range of positions and that he will be entirely unsuited for entry into other ranges of employment.

We must, first of all, get over this haphazard and fortuitous method of entering into employment in this country which has led to so much emigration. I am not theorising in this. I have seen it and I know it. In my time I have taught a thousand children in sixth class and I have seen what has happened to them. Many of them were pushed by their parents into employment for which they had no aptitude and, above all, in which they had no interest. They had to leave that employment and the next thing was they had to emigrate. They had wasted time in employment for which they had no aptitude and in which they had no interest and after that, they had no training and had to emigrate.

That is a serious position here when it comes to a question of manpower recruitment. I do not think it has been adequately dealt with. I know the Parliamentary Secretary is a man of great intelligence and I do not blame him personally. It is the approach of the White Paper that worries me — it is so inadequate. It is limited in effect, but it is better that we should aim at having some type of career guidance rather than none. The proposed career guidance may be limited but it is something. Anything one can do is better than simply doing nothing. We cannot expect 100 per cent results because, human nature being what it is, people change their minds, they seek other forms of employment. Our aim should be that as far as is humanly possible, every person in the State should be engaged in the type of work for which he is most suited and, above all, in the type of work in which he has most interest because if we are to have a happy, contented, cohesive community, it will be made up of people who are happy and interested in work for which they are suited.

I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to have another look at that aspect of the White Paper and not simply leave it to the Department of Education who are very preoccupied with wholesale reorganisation at the moment so that this career guidance matter may go by default. I know when I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary, knowing him personally as I do, that my appeal will not fall on deaf ears.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I do not think I phrased properly what I meant to say. I may have given the Senator a wrong impression and I think his criticism is valid. What I meant to say was that it is limited in that we might not be able to get a person into the exact spot but at least we should be able to get him away from a lot of the wrong ones.

Mr. Boland

Senator Dooge has forgotten one thing. The Parliamentary Secretary has no control over the trade unions. The Parliamentary Secretary cannot make the trade unions do this or that. The trade unions should assume a new approach but who will get them to do so? I was in trade unions before I became a wholetime politician. I had experience of dozens and dozens of trade unionists. Some of them would form breakaway unions in order to become secretaries, treasurers, chairmen. I do not know what the position is at the moment. It is something the Parliamentary Secretary cannot change without the full co-operation of the unions. The unions would never allow, for instance, a carpenter to take up another trade or an engine fitter to be allowed to interfere with a boilermaker. Mr. George Browne in England has been doing his best to put Britain in a position to compete. We have not succeeded yet and this must be remembered by Senators. Senator Dooge should learn the hard facts the Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries have to face. Both Senators Dooge and FitzGerald are theorists and not practical politicians and there are plenty of people in the House who can tackle human problems more clearly than they can. They must face up to the hard facts of life instead of putting forward their theories.

Mr. Rooney

I felt disappointed that in his excellent speech the Parliamentary Secretary did not give much time to the agricultural side of employment — the placement of potential workers in agricultural employment. It is said so often it has become hackneyed that agriculture is the backbone of the economy. We have been lucky that tourism has been bringing in such a high income. So has the industrial arm increased output, but agriculture is still so important that more attention should be given to the question of the placement of workers in it.

The Parliamentary Secretary has been given a very difficult task. Everybody who tries to see the magnitude of the problem realises he has almost the hardest position in the Government. The establishment of a manpower agency and the adoption of a manpower policy have come because of the changing times. We are facing daily the problems arising from automation, mechanisation and, of course, new techniques. Advances in these fields are enabling people to enjoy a higher standard of living. With the adoption of those new techniques, the question of displacement and placement in employment arises. There is also the problem of the training of personnel to take part in the new spheres of employment resulting from automation and skilled technical assistance, and, of course, we now have free trade. Free trade will create a further employment problem for us. There has been a considerable amount of mechanisation in farming and there has also been adaptation of new techniques and skill.

The White Paper, which the Minister so kindly provided, indicates that before 1970 a further 66,000 people will leave employment on the land. That is a colossal drop, considering that in 1960 there were 390,000 people employed in agriculture and in 1964 there were 352,000 and a further 10,000 fewer last year. In other words, since 1960 there are 48,000 fewer people employed in agriculture. The White Paper tells us that a further 66,000 people will have left the land by 1970. I regret that there is no policy in relation to the creation of employment on the land and the expansion of agriculture. After all, agriculture is an important arm in our economy.

The question of extra jobs was mentioned in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. The Second Programme for Economic Expansion is not going too well at the moment. It has pretty well collapsed owing to the economic and financial situation at the present time. I see that in 1951 there were 1,217,000 people at work and ten years later, in 1961, there were 1,052,000 people at work. In other words, there were 165,000 fewer people working in 1961 than there were in 1951.

Let us come now to a more recent date. What happened in the past ten years? During that time we had the First Programme for Economic Expansion. We see that in 1956 there were 1,125,000 people at work and now, after the First Programme for Economic Expansion, the figure had fallen to 1,055,000. In other words, there were 70,000 fewer people working in 1965 than there were in 1956. As I say, the number unemployed has increased by some 5,000 in recent months so the programme has taken the wrong direction.

I mention those figures because the Second Programme for Economic Expansion envisaged an expansion of 270,000 people in employment but if the number fell by 70,000 in the past ten years, how can we expect a rise of 78,000 in the remaining five years of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion? I think the time will come when the Parliamentary Secretary will have to devise a better method of sorting out and recruiting potential workers than through the labour exchanges. There are various classes of people who will be obliged to go into the labour exchanges in connection with the proposed new policy. Because of the name those premises got in the past, there will be considerable reluctancy on the part of people in various walks of life to go there for the purpose of being sorted out for employment or taken out of one class of employment and put into another.

The Parliamentary Secretary has time to give further thought to this matter. I am sure he will devise some scheme of completing forms or arranging for interviews in various localities which will enable those people to avail of the services which he intends to give to them. Certainly, this employment placement service is long overdue. It is a very practical idea. Having regard to the changing times and the increase in technology, it is absolutely essential to adopt this approach to the problem.

I wish the Parliamentary Secretary very good luck in his new job. I think his Party have chosen an excellent man for such an immense task, particularly in view of the difficulty of trying to maintain the employment position even as it is. There is a stampede from the land at the present time. In the last year a further 10,000 people have run away from the land. The Parliamentary Secretary will do a good job for the country, in addition to what he is about to do now in the industrial sphere, if he gives serious thought to the placement of workers in agricultural employment, either directly on the land or indirectly in industry associated with agriculture.

Naturally all that can be arranged and planned. The opportunities for employment are there. The Parliamentary Secretary should be able to apply his known ability now to this very grave problem as far as agriculture is concerned. It is obvious that there will be a considerable change in the output in relation to food production if 10,000 people leave the land every year and if the haemorrhage continues. As I say, the Second Programme for Economic Expansion has actually forecast that another 66,000 people will leave the land before 1970. This is a problem to which the Parliamentary Secretary should give some very serious consideration.

Mr. Yeats

I do not propose to say very much because most of what one could say has already been said several times over. The motion before the House is:

We had Senator Garret FitzGerald leading off by saying that there were a number of measures on which there was disagreement with regard to the NIEC Report on manpower policy, but, in fact, when it comes to the point there is only one. As the NIEC said, there is only one major issue on which they disagreed with Government policy. By far the greater number of the provisions in the White Paper, and also in the interdepartmental Report which preceded it, are either actively agreed to by the NIEC in their Report, or, at any rate, are not disagreed with.

The sort of matters on which there appears to be general agreement are, I suppose one could say, the setting up of the Manpower Agency itself, the setting up of a manpower forecasting unit, an industrial training authority and the general idea that there should be provision for redundancy and resettlement payments and such related matters as the proposal to build industrial estates, vocational guidance and provision for unemployed persons. These are matters on which there is general agreement and, certainly, the general agreement of the NIEC.

I think it is fair to say that, however this debate may have led off, in practice, the only real matter of disagreement is this question of the placement service. Here we have the real distinction between the practical approach which the Parliamentary Secretary has to adopt — being the man who has to get something done — and the rather theoretical approach of such Senators as Senator Garret FitzGerald and Senator Dooge. There is one curious point on which I am not quite clear, that is, what in fact they want done. I think I am right in understanding the Senators from Fine Gael who spoke as saying they wanted to see the entire placement service removed from the employment exchanges throughout the country, that is, that the finding of jobs would not be a function of the employment exchanges.

Senator O'Quigley, at column 1054 of Volume 60, No. 11, said:

When it comes to rejecting the advice of the NIEC about placement services, it seems incredible that anybody should regard our present employment exchanges as the appropriate agency for the national manpower policy for the purpose of organising placement services.

That is a very round phrase but the curious thing, it seems to me, is that that is precisely what the NIEC did envisage, in part at least. At paragraph 27 of the First NIEC Report on Manpower Policy, they said:

If the employment exchanges are to be accepted and used as institutions which have a significant part to play in facilitating economic growth as the conditions in the labour market continue to improve, it is desirable that steps be taken to make them more attractive to those who will have to use them. This is especially necessary because technological change and the process of adaptation may mean that categories of workers which previously did not use the employment services may have to move from one firm or industry to another and it is desirable that the full facilities, of the service should be used by them.

That, to me, suggests that, in their first Report, the NIEC had in mind that the employment exchanges would be used for the purposes of the placement service.

In their second Report issued after the report of the interdepartmental Committee, the NIEC shifted their views slightly and approved — contrary to the suggestion which I understood Senator Garret FitzGerald to make— the views of the interdepartmental Committee on how the placement services were to be worked. They approved of the changes proposed in the placement service and went on to say:

If the new and positive functions are to be fully appreciated, care must be taken to distinguish them from the disbursement of benefit and assistance. In the larger centres, it would be desirable to have the two sets of functions carried out in separate buildings.

In other words, they visualise the position that in the smaller centres, the placement services will still remain in the employment exchanges and it is in the larger centres only that they suggest that two sets of buildings should be used. This is almost exactly, of course, what is proposed in the White Paper. The White Paper says that in the larger centres, it is hoped to have separate parts of the building used for the purpose of placement services, which narrows the distinction considerably. I myself would be inclined to urge the Parliamentary Secretary, wherever possible, to have a separate building in a large city rather than a separate part of the same building. At any rate it seems quite clear that, as far as the NIEC were concerned, they visualised the position that over the greater part of the country, placement services would, for obvious reasons, have to be dealt with in the employment exchanges.

This dispute over the question as to who should run them, the technical details of what Department should run them and so on, I think has drawn attention away from the very real advances it is proposed to make with regard to the employment exchanges and about which Senators on the other side have said nothing. The interdepartmental committee Report, dealing with this in some detail at paragraph 50, says:

It is, in our view, particularly important now that a forward-looking policy should be adopted in the development of the manpower services provided by the Employment Service.

Later in the same paragraph, they say:

the Employment Service must now gear itself to deal with the much improved employment situation provided for under the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. Circumstances have heretofore given the Employment Service very little opportunity to present in the most favourable light to employers and workers the valuable facilities it can provide, but the improving employment situation justifies the assumption by the Service of a more positive and enterprising role.

The NIEC appear to have approved the views of the interdepartmental committee on the Employment Service and the way in which it should be improved, because they say in paragraph 3 (a):

The Committee states clearly and comprehensively the positive functions which the Employment Service must in future perform.

We are in danger of forgetting this real advance which the Parliamentary Secretary proposes to carry out in the Employment Service. Theoretically, one could certainly agree that it would be an advantage to have the placement service completely separate from the existing employment exchanges. It is really unrealistic that we should, within a short period of time, be able to set up perhaps hundreds — I am not sure how many employment exchanges there are — of new offices to deal with placement all over the country and expect to have the scheme working efficiently by the time it becomes essential. I do not think it is really practicable. Sometimes one has to forget about the theoretical perfection that might be achieved and get down to the ordinary day to day question of how these things can be done.

I was not impressed by the arguments as to which Department the placement service should be under. Once it is settled that in the majority of cases outside the big cities the employment exchanges must be used, and that in the cities it will be in separate offices, even if they are in the same building, it does not seem to matter a great deal which Department runs it. The suggestion appears to be that if you take the placement service away from the Department of Social Welfare and give it to the Department of Industry and Commerce, or to a new Minister for Labour, in some mysterious way, the whole spirit of the office and the attitude of the people will be changed. This suggestion ignores the fact that up to 1947 these offices were under the Department of Industry and Commerce, and I do not think there is any evidence that they were better than they have been since.

The people immediately concerned, the workers who will have to use them, could not care less which Government Department runs them, so this is really a sort of distinction without a difference. The essential thing is the degree to which they are refurbished, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, and more important, the extent to which they will be used by employers. If the workers find that these offices are useful from the point of view of getting employment or guidance, that will change their attitude to them. So long as they are not useful from the point of view of getting employment or guidance, they will be regarded simply as dole offices. The important thing is what will be done in these offices and not who runs them. This is a practical day to day matter of organising the offices. The Parliamentary Secretary has chosen by far the most intelligent method of dealing with this problem, not by aiming at some impractical target away in the stars, but by keeping his feet on the ground and saying what has to be done, and doing it without worrying unduly about the exact methods. In this field alone, his attitude would suggest that he will succeed in his undoubtedly very difficult tasks and I should like to join other Senators in wishing him luck.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

I should like, first of all, to deal with one or two matters which Senator McQuillan raised. Indeed, I regret that he is not here. I should like to endorse what he said about the experience in Canada as reported by the OECD and, despite the remarks made by Senator Yeats, this works very much in favour of the thesis that the placement service should, so far as possible — and we must be practical about this — be separated from dole offices. This is what the Canadians are working towards as rapidly as possible, and apparently with good results.

Senator McQuillan's point about developing industrial centres was well taken. We know that two such centres have been chosen, one in Galway and one in Waterford, and apparently the idea is that in other regions, which have been arbitrarily defined by the Department of Local Government without any prior study of what are the real viable matters of common interest and common hinterland around those centres, we are to await regional surveys, some of which, I think, are not yet under way, in the hope that if and when they are completed, some area will emerge in which industrial centres will be established. That is quite unsatisfactory.

I should like to endorse what Senator McQuillan said. We will have to move a bit faster than that. We cannot afford to wait until these surveys are carried out. Indeed, I am not sure that we can accept the existing pattern of regions that has been created. No matter what centre is chosen in these regions, in most cases it must be somewhere near the middle of the region and it will not be so located as to provide increased employment opportunities for the people in the really badly-hit parts of the country. The division of these regions in the northern part of the country is extremely bad. It is difficult to see how one could possibly select an industrial centre in those regions which would provide for adequate industrial development in the northern part of the Republic. I do not want to press that, but it is something to which attention should be given. We cannot afford to wait for surveys to be carried out before something is done to establish industrial centres and create employment.

I also noted what Senator McQuillan said about county development schemes. I must admit that I had not previously given thought to the question of which Department should be responsible for this. His suggestion that it should not be left as it is at present with the Department of Agriculture, I think, but that it should be under the Manpower Agency is worthy of comment and should be considered. I should like to look further into it.

On the question of employment trends, a good deal of confusion was created by Senator McQuillan and was added to by the Parliamentary Secretary if I may say so. I think we should record what the position is. The fact is that we are not making any significant progress towards the employment targets in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion. In spite of our present temporary situation, we are making good progress towards the output targets. Even though they may be falling behind at present, there is every prospect that if we can resolve our difficulties this year, we will catch up. According to the published figures, between 1960 and 1964 total employment rose by 4,000 from 1,055,000 to 1,059,000. We achieved 4,000 out of the 78,000 figure that was to be achieved. If anything, the figures for 1965 are likely to show a step backwards because there is no reason to believe that the flow from agriculture was less than the increase in industrial employment. It seems likely that total employment in 1965—when the figure is published in the Economic Statistics issued prior to the Budget—may show a drop on the previous year and bring us back down to 2,000 above the figure for 1960. This is a serious matter. It is not one to be raised in a partisan spirit.

Great efforts have been made to increase output, but we have clearly underestimated the growth of productivity. In order to achieve the targets, we will have to see a much faster rate in the growth of output per worker and in the same way get an increase in employment. That is something we should think seriously about. It is not an easy problem to solve. It may require steps so drastic that they may prove unacceptable, but this is an issue that should be faced not only by the Government but by the rest of us in the community. The political Parties and the trade unions have an important role to play. I think it right that we should record the facts.

The Parliamentary Secretary stated quite correctly that industrial employment was working towards the target. The trouble is that the decline in agriculture, as pointed out by other Senators, is twice as rapid as was foreseen, and we are not, even according to official statistics, achieving any increased employment in the other sectors which adequately compensates for that, and which were supposed to yield 58,000 new jobs over the period. We seem to have made virtually no progress, apart from a gain in industry where official figures show an increase of 2,000 out of the 58,000 in the past four years. Statisticians always tend to underestimate change. In the 1950s, they grossly underestimated the decline in employment in this particular sector of the economy, in respect of which there are no good statistics. In this period there may be an increase, also underestimated, but it seems unlikely that if progress has been made in this sector, it is anything like what is required to meet the employment targets of the Second Programme. I think it right that we should face this issue of the flight from the land.

What Senator Rooney said on this point was very realistic. We have hitherto tended to turn our eyes away from the fact that there is a decline in agricultural employment. We tend to assure ourselves that we are doing something about it and that it will stop. We also have a tendency, particularly in politics, to feel that if we do something about it and take steps to cope with the decline from the land and do something about retraining these people, we will be accused politically of having given up the fight to keep people on the land. Until we face realistically that whatever we do and whatever Government are in power, there will be a continuing decline in the agricultural population, it is the duty of the Government in power— and of the Opposition to press them to do so—to try to make provision for the retraining and re-employment of these people. Until we do that, we will not be doing our duty.

There is a tendency, I find, in this Government—and all Governments have been guilty in some respect of this—to avoid this issue and to take the view that one should not try to provide alternative employment for people leaving the rural areas because they would be accused of having given up the ghost. They are going to go anyway and it is our duty to provide alternative employment for them. In significant numbers, these people are married with families and it is more important that they, with their family commitments here, should be found alternative employment than to provide employment for people who are just leaving school. We should give them major priority in this respect, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will bear this in mind and endeavour to do something about it.

Coming back to the Parliamentary Secretary's speech, he is, as we are all agreed, to be congratulated on his approach to this problem and on the presentation of his approach. His speech was informative and has added a great deal to the very unsatisfactory White Paper which for some reason he allowed himself to be responsible for issuing. The White Paper was uninformative, said the minimum, and gave no hint of what was in the minds of those who compiled it, and this was a pity because the fact is quite clear from the Parliamentary Secretary's speech that a lot of thought has been given to this subject by him particularly, and presumably by the Government, and that some matters which were dismissed very summarily in the White Paper, which seems to regard them as small matters, are in fact matters to which much constructive thought has been given.

This debate has been worthwhile if for nothing else but the manner in which it has elicited additional information on the Government's views on this matter and complements this quite unsatisfactory and inadequate White Paper. The Parliamentary Secretary addresses himself to an irrevocable approach to policies but his thoughts in the first instance are not irrevocable, and he has agreed with the criticism which I made of the interdepartmental committee report that it was spotty and illogical. The words are his but he has certainly conveyed in those few words very much of what I took a lot more words to convey when I was speaking.

Another Senator also suggested that I said too much about methods of administration. There is possibly something in that criticism, in that the amount of time I devoted to it was disproportionate to the overall importance of administration. I accept that, but there was a good reason why I spoke at such length on this aspect. The fact is that apart from the administrative question and what goes with it, the other aspects of manpower policy are being handled as well as possible with the inadequate resources available and in the time available since the Government first seriously turned their attention to this problem, and there is not much point in making a long speech listing all the things that are being done well. Our job here is not to comment so much on good work being done but to deal with those aspects of Government policy which to some degree are facing difficulties and to ensure that they do not forget them. That is a good excuse for the extent to which I spoke about the method of dealing with this question.

This is the outstanding issue on which there is disagreement and it would be a dull speech which did not go beyond the point of recording agreement. The Parliamentary Secretary was perfectly right to give priority to urgent matters, to measures of training and redundancy. If he did not do so, we would be the first to attack him. I do not think this is any excuse for not indicating in the White Paper an intention to do in due course the less urgent, but perhaps in some respects, more important things. It would have been better if the White Paper had been more explicit on this. He admitted that the idea of social welfare is theoretically desirable. I am quite sure that in using the word "theoretical" he was not thinking in terms of political theory as seen by Plato and Aristotle but that he meant something which is desirable which he does not think can be achieved at the moment for various reasons which quite wisely he did not go into.

Similarly, with regard to the question of placement and whether it should be in the Department of Industry and Commerce or the Department of Social Welfare, he did not adopt a non possumus attitude, and clearly he has a point of view. In some ways perhaps I felt that he has a more open point of view than Senator Yeats, whose approach to this subject disappointed me a little. From the tone of the Parliamentary Secretary's speech, we might hope to push him in a direction in which he was already moving, and I would hope that he has not been dragged too far back by Senator Yeats's approach to the question.

Mr. Yeats

I said I did not think it mattered.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

That is the whole trouble, because I think it does matter, and if you convince him that it does not matter, he may do nothing about it, and that would matter. I am not entirely clear about some of these administrative problems and why he should be slow to deal with them. It appears from what the Parliamentary Secretary said that new placement officers are going to be appointed in separate offices in these buildings. It is not ideal, but we must be practical and it is at any rate a step in the right direction. Why would it involve a slowing up if an administrative decision were to be taken that these officers should be responsible to him and not to the Department of Social Welfare? It requires only a Cabinet decision, and that should not be something that would hold up this process for so long. It would, of course, be slow if one were to wait before doing anything about placement until you had a nice new building in every town and village in the country, but nobody proposes that that should be the approach. I do not think there is so much at issue between us. Certainly if anything that was suggested on our side would involve hanging things up, we would withdraw the suggestion immediately. I am delighted that this step is to be taken. It is a first step in the right direction.

I should like to comment on another thing the Parliamentary Secretary said which disturbed me, that is, his reference to the fact that half his staff was present in the House. This was said semi-humorously, but I take it that there is some force in it. When he spoke about the necessity to give priority to particular things, to concentrate attention here and not there and to leave certain things over, he seemed to suggest he is not adequately served as regards the staff at his disposal. One man cannot do everything and it seems to me the Government are not attaching due importance to the manpower policy. If, within this vast Department of Industry and Commerce, the Parliamentary Secretary has only two reasonably senior staff—I trust he has a shorthand typist somewhere—this is unsatisfactory and we ought to make a point of it openly that the Government should give a higher priority to this question of a manpower policy and allocate to the Parliamentary Secretary the staff required to get on with the work that has to be done. It is unfair to expect him to do everything almost single-handed.

The question of the placement offices is the crucial thing at issue between us. We agree on most other matters and this seems to be the only question on which there is disagreement, if one leaves aside the matter of a Department of Labour. This is something to which we should give more consideration. If in fact the Parliamentary Secretary proceeds by appointing new placement officers, one would like to hear more about the kind of people to be appointed, the type of training they will have, where they will come from. It is something about which the Parliamentary Secretary should say something in the reasonably near future. They are to be put into rooms in repainted and refurnished employment exchanges and they are to be officers of the Department of Social Welfare. I am afraid this will not meet the need for the psychological change that is so necessary.

Here I detect a certain amount of lack of interest among the civil servants who wrote the interdepartmental report and among speakers here today who dismissed it as an administrative matter. The members of NIEC are not the theorists that Senators Boland and Nash dismissed Senator Dooge and myself as being today. They are businessmen, trade unionists, all closer to the facts of life than perhaps politicians are. They said the employment service must be integrated with short-term manpower forecasting and with arrangements for training, retraining and vocational guidance.

That is one point which has not been adverted to in this debate and it is one to which more attention should be given. The report went on to say that the placement service must be clearly distinct from the operations of the employment exchanges. The important thing is that this must be put across to the public in some forcible way. If there is to be the psychological change needed, some fuss must be made about this matter. There must be publicity for the change-over of responsibility to another Department, for the fact that these officers working in the same building but in separate rooms belong to another Department and have a different responsibility. It must be made known that this is so. If for no other reason—and the NIEC give a good one—than the fuss that can be made of it, the change-over to another Department would be worth the effort, but simply to appoint people and put them in refurbished rooms in the same employment exchanges is not a change that one can make a fuss about or get into the newspapers.

There is the psychological element which has been underestimated by speakers and by the civil servants who wrote the report. They ought to give more thought to this. We accept, of course, that you cannot start building new placement offices all over the country overnight and the NIEC were reasonable in this. They said that in major centres it would be desirable to have the two sets of functions carried out in separate buildings, but there was a realisation that we could not do it all at once. The NIEC Report suggested that outside the major centres the functions should be carried out in different rooms. This, I suggest, should involve two external doors, one for the employment exchange and one for the placement office so that even if he had to go out one door into the rain and in the other door, a person would know he was in two different offices fulfilling two different functions. This point must be made publicly.

Senator McQuillan made a good point when he foresaw difficulties in the situation where the Parliamentary Secretary was having something done for him on an agency basis and therefore on a subsidiary basis by the Department whose Minister is in the Cabinet while the Parliamentary Secretary is not. It seems odd that the Minister for Social Welfare is the agent of the Parliamentary Secretary, doing things for him. It does not seem to be a tidy administrative arrangement.

On the question of redundancy, I sympathise with the Parliamentary Secretary and his frustration about the length of time it has taken to settle this matter. It is unsatisfactory that it has taken nine months, presumably because of disagreements between the different Parties. On the question of whether the workers should contribute, the Parliamentary Secretary foresaw that the Labour Party would disagree and said he hoped the main Opposition Party had an open mind or would support the Government. I have an open mind on it and when we get more details of what is proposed, we shall seriously consider it. I was unconvinced by the argument of the Parliamentary Secretary—it did not alter my open mind—who tended to talk in clichés. He said a contribution by employees was justified by the realities of the situation here. I cannot quite imagine what he was referring to. What are the realities of the situation in Ireland that make a contribution by employees appropriate? I am genuinely puzzled. One could imagine that employees in this country, who are so badly paid vis-á-vis workers elsewhere, would not have to contribute. It is a pity the Parliamentary Secretary clouded it in such mysterious phrases. If he is to carry the main Opposition Party—we have, as I said, an open mind—he must change his attitude on this when he comes to us with concrete legislative proposals.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I agree it was not very worthy of me.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

It was one small lapse in an otherwise excellent speech. On manpower forecasting, the Parliamentary Secretary confined himself to the difficulty of getting statisticians. We must face up to the fact that improvement in the way we live, economically, socially and culturally, is now impeded seriously by our inability to get at the facts of what is happening. Until we get at the facts, it will be difficult for us to persuade anyone to do anything. We cannot get the facts because we have not got trained statisticians.

Unfortunately, the problem in this matter is so serious that it is difficult to see how it can be overcome. Our universities are not in a position to train statisticians because they cannot get statisticians as professors. There are six posts vacant for statisticians in the universities in the United Kingdom. If we cannot begin to get the people to teach statisticians—it takes four years—it looks as if we will be well into the 1970s before we can see any alleviation of the situation. In the meantime, the impediment to social reform and economic progress here is a serious one and the Parliamentary Secretary will have to adopt some drastic measures. We must break away from the idea of paying statisticians the same rate as principal officers. We must be prepared to import statisticians for at least five years. We cannot have the whole progress of this country held up because one particular category of skilled work is not available.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

If we cannot get those people out of the United Kingdom, what are we to do?

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

We will have to outbid the United Kingdom. I appreciate it is not an easy solution and Senator Ó Maoláin is quite right to enter a caveat. Certainly the position at the moment is that we had good statisticians available here until they got better wages somewhere else or their nerves broke and they left. I think if we tried to pay them a little more than half the going rate, as in the past, we might get them.

The Parliamentary Secretary seemed a little unsure of himself with regard to housing when he said he did not want to take on additional responsibility in this area and he would be content to advise the local authorities. Experience in this country shows that if you want to get houses built, where there are jobs going and workers available, you will have to do something a little stronger than advising the local authorities. You need power to direct them and subsidise them. This power did not exist until the National Building Agency was established with regard to the building of houses for industrial workers. This was a farsighted policy about five years ago. It was ahead of its time and it was one of the first manpower moves made. It has not proved as farsighted in its execution as it was in its planning because this body has not carried out this function adequately. There is something wrong here because of the inability to get houses built by local authorities or the National Building Agency. I do not know what is wrong but I would have a lot more confidence in it if the Parliamentary Secretary were responsible for this agency or had power to tell it to build houses as they were needed. He will have to take this a little more seriously, even if he is not directly responsible for it. He must have power to get them to build houses where they are needed.

Tómas Ó Maoláin

He has no power over the trade unions.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

Senator Boland referred to this power over the trade unions and seemed to think I had never heard of the trade unions. I am aware of the problem with regard to the trade unions but it can be overcome. The point made by Senator Boland about the trade unions was that there was no good simply advising a boy that he would make a good carpenter if his father was not a carpenter. There are skilled trades in which this practice exists. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary's advisers could almost say at the drop of a hat what percentage of those jobs are involved. If it is more than one per cent of all the jobs in the country, I shall be surprised. I think I am far more practical than Senator Boland on this. I know it is a problem but I think there is only a small minority of those trades in existence. I think good work has been done by An Ceárd Comhairle in regard to this problem. The trade unions are not, by and large, an obstacle to progress. I do not think Senator Boland or Senator Ó Maoláin are doing themselves justice in saying the whole progress of this country is being held up by the trade unions.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

No; I did not suggest that. I said the Parliamentary Secretary had no power over the trade unions.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

I am not sure what particular direction is needed. If you pay them the money to do it, they will do it.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Not necessarily. The trade unions have a lot to say about the question of the utilisation of modern building techniques.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

We are building 11,000 houses or something like that per year in this country. The question of where they are to be built has nothing to do with the trade unions. It is Government policy which is at fault. No doubt, if you did not have restrictive practices, you could build, not 11,000, but 300,000 houses. The issue is to get houses built where they are needed and the trade unions are not responsible for that. The trade unions do not come into the picture at all with regard to the different parts of the country where the houses are to be built. With respect to Senator Ó Maoláin, it is drawing a red herring across the trail to suggest that they do. Senator Ó Maoláin is underestimating the power of his Government to have houses built in areas where they are needed. There has been a great increase in the number of houses built, even under the present Government. The problem of the trade unions is not simply a question of not having enough houses built but that the houses are not built where the jobs are, which is a manpower problem rather than a matter of building unions or restrictive practices.

I endorse what the Parliamentary Secretary said, and what other speakers said, about this being a human problem. It has been debated at times at a somewhat theoretical level when we talk about administrative problems because administrative difficulties often stand in the way of solving human problems.

Finally, I was amused by the Parliamentary Secretary's witty remarks about Fine Gael propaganda. It is amusing that if any Senator on this side of the House makes even a tentative reference to the fact, which is a simple fact, that Fine Gael have favoured a manpower policy and an incomes policy for some years—this was denounced at the time by Fianna Fáil—it is treated as propaganda. I am not quite sure what the word "propaganda" means but I do not think that is an entirely proper use of it. I do not want to overstress this side of the House but it is well known that Senator Dooge has been a pioneer in this field and has been pressing this for a long time before it was taken seriously by the Government. I think he deserves credit for it, as do the Government for the way they are now acting and for the appointment of the Parliamentary Secretary and the manner in which he is now getting on with the job.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I am sure the Senator will appreciate that my remarks were mainly jocose.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

Yes, I appreciate that. Nevertheless, I thought it desirable to put it quite straight for the record. It has been, I think, an encouraging debate. I think it was worthwhile having it. The Parliamentary Secretary was good enough to acknowledge that. The debate has shown the way in which the Seanad can serve a fairly useful function. It has cleared the air. We have got information that we did not previously have. We have now got a divergence of views and it remains to be seen whether the Parliamentary Secretary is willing or unwilling to modify his views. The only point on which he seemed to be digging in his heels a bit —he may well be right—is whether the Manpower Agency should be part of the Civil Service or an autonomous body. I am for an autonomous body but I noted what he said on this. It may well be that he is right on this point.

The Parliamentary Secretary, on all the other matters which were raised, showed a willingness to consider alternative views. That approach is one which we certainly welcome. I think he knows he can be assured of every support from this side of the House in the work he is doing. As progress is made, it will be recognised and he will receive due credit for it. It has been a pleasure to have this discussion and, in the circumstances, in view of the approach the Parliamentary Secretary made, we do not wish to press the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

The Seanad adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 16th February, 1966.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 10 Feb 1966

Manpower Policy: Motion (resumed).

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 10 Feb 1966