Section 12 (1) states:
The Authority shall have power to charge, receive and recover fees for researches, tests, investigations and analyses undertaken by the Authority on behalf of any person other than the Minister.
Is it intended that the Authority be self-financing?
It is intended that the Authority will raise the optimum contribution from fees for work done, but there is no policy goal that it should be self-financing. It would not be desirable, given the nature of the work it is involved in, that there should be such a policy. If there were such a goal it would be driven by the commercial imperative rather than the question of harmonisation of standards.
If that is not the goal, the Authority will have to ask the State to make up shortfalls in funding. The country will not always achieve present growth rates. When shortage of money becomes apparent and the Department of Finance demands a Minister cut back on agencies, will we see staff cutbacks and redundancies? These redundancies might not be forced but might be compulsory in everything but name. There is potential for damage to staff if and when this agency is set up. I have Teagasc in mind, which was set up with fine endeavour to conduct research and help the farming community. When we came into office in 1987-88 severe financial constraints had to be introduced to bring finances into line. Teagasc suffered severe cutbacks. There were no compulsory redundancies but there was a regime and climate in which there were staff cutbacks. Teagasc is only now recovering. I fear a repeat of this scenario in this Authority. Ministers may have to go cap in hand to successive Ministers for Finance to get funding for the various subheads within their Estimates. Agencies are then easy targets for financial rigour from the Department of Finance — ministerial and departmental rigour. Can the Minister give me and the staff guarantees that the scenario I have outlined will not happen?
The honest answer to that, whatever about the political answer, is no. It would be foolish of any Minister to give absolute assurances that in no set of circumstances would the conditions envisaged by Deputy O'Rourke arise. I cannot give that assurance in respect of any agency. I fail to see why this agency ought to be different from the other myriad of agencies which exist in the country. Even in bad times, to the best of my knowledge, I cannot reel off many examples where people were made compulsorily redundant in the public service agencies.
I did not say compulsorily redundant, but the climate was induced where redundancy was almost that.
The best example was given by the Deputy when she referred to her own Government in 1987, a time when the financial situation was serious. The MacSharry cuts were severe at the time and involved the closure of organisations such as An Foras Forbatha. There the people had the opportunity of being redeployed into the Department of the Environment or elsewhere in the public service. The MacSharry package was one of voluntary redeployment or redundancy. The efficacy of that is something we could spend a lot of time debating. Numbers quickly build up again and sometimes it is the best people who leave while some of the timeservers continue to serve time. That is a wider debate. There is no intention on the part of the Department, or the officials concerned with piloting this Bill or on my part, that any disproportionate vengeance ought to wreaked on NSAI because of a deteriorating fiscal climate in the future. Since it is the intention of this Government to stay in power we do not envisage a deteriorating fiscal climate for a long time.
The Government inherited a good climate.
It might happen further down the road.
Deputy Sheehan agrees with me.
It was handed over to sound hands.
It is not our intention that NSAI staff should pay the price for that.
Of course it is not the Minister's intention but I fear it will be the outcome.
The point has been made.
