Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 June 2012
1Deputy Sean Fleming asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the number and extent to which staff who recently retired from the public service have been re-hired; if guidelines are in place regarding the duration of such contracts; if he will ensure that such contracts are for no longer than six months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28316/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraReturns from across the public service indicate that approximately 7,900 public servants retired during the first three months of this year. The bulk of these retirements occurred prior to the ending of the grace period on 29 February. Information received to date by my Department, exclusive of the health sector, shows the number of re-engagements of retired civil and public servants to be approximately 70 so far in 2012. In addition, in the education sector some 254 secondary teachers and 67 primary teachers have been re-engaged in order to maintain front line services. These figures are small in comparison to the numbers who have retired.
The general policy is that staff should not be retained beyond retirement age and any re-engagement should be kept as limited as possible and should be for a very restricted period. Usually, the rehiring of retirees is related to completion of a specific task where their particular skill or experience is required. Situations can arise where a particular issue requires a short-term specialist input in order to complete a task. In many instances the most appropriate and cost-effective way of solving a short-term problem is to bring in someone who has worked in the area and understands the background. In the majority of cases these re-hires are very short-term and project specific and where the short-term nature would not justify the expense of any more formal selection process.
Where an officer who goes on pension is retained in the public service or is re-employed in the public service in a non-established capacity, the pension is abated. Such pensioners may never earn more than they would have if they had continued working. Where a person is re-engaged on a fee-paid basis, the abatement is applied to the fee itself, not the pension.
I thank the Minister for his response and appreciate the information he has provided. The main issue on which the people want a response in this regard concerns the biggest category in the public sector, health services, which employ approximately one third of all public servants. Somewhere along the line, the Minister, Deputy Reilly, must be brought into line with everything happening in the public service. He has obtained an exemption from the pay ceiling for hospital consultants and there are a couple of thousand hospital consultants earning more than the Taoiseach. That is wrong. Every Member of the Cabinet probably knows in his or her heart that this is wrong. How has the Minister for Health the ability to circumvent the pay ceilings? I see it as a discourtesy that the HSE or the Minister for Health can allow a situation where the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform must come into the Dáil today and say he will have to exclude the health services. They must be brought to heel at some stage.
We are not in opposition to the health services, but they are hiding under the radar. We know they have already gone over budget by €150 million in the first quarter and by July we will see hospital and bed closures. In the meantime, we will not have been informed of the cost of using agency staff. Agency nurses are being employed throughout the country and paying them costs more than rehiring nurses as allowed under the existing arrangement. Is there a legal limit on the number that can be rehired? The Minister has said the minimum number possible should be rehired. Is there a limit on the period of time in which these people can be rehired? Can the Minister establish a limit? Can he send out a circular to say the limit is six months and that nobody can be rehired after that?
This all sounds great in theory, but it is different when it comes down to the specifics. There are specialist areas where it is very difficult to get a replacement in the short term for somebody who opts out. The Deputy will be aware of the difficulty we had with regard to the Director of Corporate Enforcement. It was important that person stayed in his post until important work was concluded. However, I fully agree with the bulk of what Deputy Fleming has said. I am against the notion of rehiring people who have left and agree the terms for rehiring should be very restricted. I have had direct discussions with all my colleagues on this.
The Deputy made a specific point with regard to the health sector. I regret I do not have the specific numbers on the health area but, as the Deputy pointed out, they are the biggest numbers. In fairness to the Minister, everybody in the House knows there is a major job of work to do on restructuring the HSE and in fairness to the HSE, the sector has been very proactive in downsizing, in the past 12 months in particular as we saw from the report of the implementation body today. I am alert to the points made by Deputy Fleming. This is an issue on which we must keep a close scrutiny to ensure that when we are hiring, we are creating new positions for people new into employment and that people who retire on pensions are retired.
I am pleased the Minister agrees with me with regard to the health service, because we cannot come in here again the next time we have questions on public expenditure and still have a lacuna in terms of information on the health service. Will the Minister consider issuing a circular setting out a minimum period for which a person can be rehired temporarily? If the period is over six months, there is a case for hiring somebody new to do the job. I accept the need to rehire retirees where a project is near completion, where technology is involved and where it could take three to four months to hire staff with the relevant qualifications. However, there should be a limit on the period for which they can be rehired.
I will consider the Deputy's suggestion, but it is hard to be prescriptive for everybody, because there will be hard cases that will not be amenable to that situation. The situation does cause me concern and I have, for example, raised it directly with the Minister for Education and Skills. The notion of teachers retiring and then filling in for colleagues on sick days and maternity leave is wrong. I do not know whether we need to go a legal route on that, but it is one issue I want to bring to an end.
