I am glad of the opportunity to speak even briefly on this important subject. I am glad that the Minister himself is here for the debate and I am grateful to him for coming here. I trust that this is in recognition of the importance of this aspect of his responsibilities.
There are many aspects of the public service which give rise to varying degrees of concern. We are fortunate in having before us the Public Service Advisory Council report for year ended 31 October 1979, which has just been presented to the Dáil. It reminds us of a number of issues which lie before us. In this report the position with regard to promotional mobility is set out at paragraph 3.3.10. It does not make very encouraging reading. We are told, and I quote:
...19 meetings were held with the staff interests with a view to reaching agreement for some opening up of posts to competition.
—at several levels. We are then told:
Subject to ratification by the various staff associations, agreement has been reached on the overall objective that "existing promotional arrangements in the higher grades of the Civil Service should be opened up with a view to the best-fitted civil servant being appointed". It has also been agreed that the attainment of this objective should be on a phased basis and a period of five years is considered appropriate.
This is very limited progress indeed. One could turn this around and say that what is agreed is that the best-fitted civil servants in many cases will not be promoted in the next five years. Put in those terms as an equally accurate statement, it is a depressing picture. As the report of the council points out, this situation has continued now for ten years. They refer back to the review group's recommendations that vacancies at the levels referred to, assistant principal level and higher, which are not to be filled from open competition should be advertised over the entire public service including commercial and State-sponsored bodies who should have a reciprocal arrangement. In the decade which has elapsed it seems that little or no headway has been made towards reaching these important objectives. The report suggests that it will be five years at least before limited progress is made in this area, and this is very disturbing.
There can be no legitimate case made against the principle that the best-fitted public servants should hold office. We are talking about the public servants, the civil servants whose function is to serve the public and the community. That service can be given only if the best of the best-fitted people are available and can take the posts that exist by way of promotion.
There are two problems here. One is promotion by merit within a particular Department and the other is mobility between Departments on a promotional level. So far as promotion on merit within the Department is concerned, the picture is very patchy. Some Departments have made great strides in many years past by promoting on a merit basis and I trust that this will be maintained, with due regard for humanity in cases of people whose merits may not sustain a case for their early promotion but who, nonetheless, should be fitted in as far as possible when a vacancy arises to a post which would be within their capacity. However, that does not change the fact that the position is pretty depressing.
No case can be made for the present patchy system, where some Departments are fully on a merit basis and others appear to be on the basis of seniority, regardless of merit. The difference between the types of service provided to the community by Departments where the different systems apply is quite striking. While, of course, changes must be introduced gradually and humanely, and where they have been introduced this, has been done with success, there can be no case for retaining a system in which people are promoted regardless of merit on the basis of seniority. The country deserves better than that. What is striking is the quality of service provided by the civil service if given a chance to do so, where people are promoted on a merit basis. It is clear that the civil service contains people of great ability who, once given the chance, can serve the country at a level and with a capacity which equals that of any country with whom we are in competition.
Another important aspect is promotion between the Departments which secures mobility. There are specialised grades requiring special experience in some cases. Allowing for that, and minimising it as much as possible, it is important that when any post becomes available for a general service grade it should be open to competition throughout the service. Anything less cannot be acceptable to the public, who are paying very substantial sums indeed—almost double what they were three years ago—for public service remuneration. There is a problem of mobility at higher level. The report from the Department has not much to say about this. In paragraph 338, it tells that discussions have been held between the Department of the Public Service and the Confederation of Irish Industry with a view to staff exchange between the civil service and private industry, without the slightest indication as to what, if any, progress has been made or even what was discussed beyond the fact that it involves staff exchange. As to whether short-term, long-term or what kind of scale or where they had got to in the discussion, nothing was said.
The report of the council does not advery to this, as far as I can see. I hope progress can be made here and that the skills and abilities of public servants can be made available to the private sector where there is a possibility that they can be utilised and that, in return, the public service could gain an access of knowledge and experience from outside, through people in the private sector moving in, possibly for a period of time rather than on a permanent basis, and that through that mobility both the private sector and the public service could benefit. That should be our aim. I ask the Minister, in that regard, because his own Department's report is so discreet, to say the least, to give some indication as to what progress was made in this respect.
There is an important section in the report of the Public Service Advisory Council on the image of the civil service which should be read and considered by everybody who is concerned about the public service. Their image is not as good as it should be, or as good as it could be, considering the kind of service given to us and the capacity and ability and sense of duty in service throughout the public service as a whole. The council does advert to the difficulties which the civil service have in putting themselves across, the inhibitions imposed by their necessarily low profile. There have, however, been times in the past when they have been successful in projecting themselves and as a result have been able to attract a significant proportion of the available talent into their ranks. A sustained effort should be made to maintain progress in this regard and to improve their image so that the reality of the existing opportunities in the public service—and in the period ahead the opportunities will play a dynamic part in the development of our whole society—should be appreciated by young people who should not be put off by the stereotyped image of the civil service which has been handed down from generation to generation.
There is a reference on page 14 of the council's report to staff relations in the public sector. It is clearly a very inhibited reference which talks about delays in dealing with certain issues and that they are inhibited by the fact that the Commission on Industrial Relations are considering the matter. It is clear from what they say that they are concerned about justifiable complaints which can exist about delays in dealing with staff relations matters, which of course in many instances have led to important and serious, and in some instances, prolonged strikes.
There is a reference on page 34 of the Department's report paragraph 352, to the question of flexitime. It is a rather disappointing reference and talks about a number of pilot projects covering about 1,500 staff, a tiny proportion, less than 5 per cent of the Minister's civil servants. No indication is given, either in the report from the Department or the council, as to why so little progress has been made and as to why there should be resistance within the civil service to flexitime. I hope that more progress will be made and that the suggestions which are current that opposition to flexitime derives from a situation where, with existing, rigid, fixed working hours, in the absence of checking in and out, civil servants may not be as tied down to doing a full day's work and that they fear that, with flexitime, they will be required to do a full number of hours work will be rebutted both by the staff organisations and by the Minister. The only effective form of rebuttal is for a general introduction of flexitime wherever, in the interest of the service to the public, this can be achieved. There is no excuse for a situation where over 95 per cent of the public service are not operating flexitime and where there appears to be a resistence to it or a failure to implement it. The Minister could usefully refer to this and tell us what progress he hopes to make.
On page 34 also there is a reference to training for the public service and the working party between the CSTC and the IPA. I am no longer a member of the executive committee of the IPA, so feel that I can refer to this. Over the whole period of my membership of the executive committee there has been a constant saga of foot-dragging and evasion of the issue on the side of the civil service, which has inhibited the development of the maximum use of the training facilities by the IPA and, indeed, in the civil service, to the best advantage. I trust the Minister will pay some attention to this and ensure that his working party submit a report rapidly and that he, himself, will take steps to ensure that the services of the IPA are fully used, as they have not been throughout the last ten or 15 years because of resistence within, in fact, his own Department.
On the question of recruitment, it is striking that the report of the Public Service Advisory Council makes no reference to recruitment and this has been a tradition of their reports. It is one of the features of their reports which I do not understand. I would urge the council to turn their attention to this. The Department, in its report, does refer to recruitment but only in a very limited sense in terms of improvements in the local appointments commission modus operandi which might be introduced also in the Civil Service Commission. The whole question of recruitment to the civil service is something which should be looked at. Recruitment is of course, effectively in the administrative grade exclusively at the level of people completing their education and with no possibility of people coming in bringing with them experience from outside. To ensure against an adverse effect on promotional opportunities any such arrangement would have to involve a corresponding opportunity for people in the public service to move out and encouraging outward mobility so that people coming in would not be blocking promotions but could bring with them the kind of experience which under present circumstances cannot exist within the administrative sector of the public service, the members of which inherently are limited to whatever experience they acquire during the educational process. This, I know, is a deficiency in the system and mobility outwards and inwards would overcome this.
There is one further matter to which I would refer, and I must speak very rapidly and very briefly, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is beginning to look at me. I must refer to this matter, which is the allegations that have been made of political intervention in two important sectors of law enforcement within the last couple of months. We have had this in regard to the Garda Síochána from the Association of Inspectors and Sergeants and the Minister for Justice's reply to this was misleading and disingenuous. He purported to believe that the only suggestion of political intervention related to such matters as transfer of gardaí where the initiative was taken by the gardaí themselves and ignored the fact that the allegations extended to stopping of prosecutions by political intervention and the stopping of Garda activity by preventing gardaí from doing their work. These are most serious allegations, made six weeks or two months ago, which require full investigation and a full report to this House to be made by a responsible body of those concerned.
We now have similar allegations made by the preventive officers. There is a suggestion of political interference and governmental interference, not merely in cases where somebody brings the odd bottle across that they should not, but in cases which involve criminal activities and assault on preventive officers. These allegations have been denied by the Minister. Frankly, his denial is no more convincing than the evasive attempts of the Minister for Justice to deny that such influences are at work in regard to the Garda Síochána.
These are matters which the Government must take seriously if they have any concern for the public interest. We cannot continue in a situation where public servants are forced, through their staff organisation, to make public allegations in this respect and these allegations are not investigated, where their morale is undermined and the confidence of the public in the Garda and the preventive officers and other bodies of law enforcement is undermined because of the failure of the Government to respond to these allegations. The Minister must take this matter seriously, both in reference to people under his own direct control and people who are indirectly the responsibility of his Department, as being within the public service. All I can say is that for our part, if and when we have the responsibility—and I would expect it to be before very long—of forming a Government, I would regard it as my responsibility, were I to head such a Government, to take all necessary steps to prevent this type of political intervention. That would involve the necessary steps to be taken against any politicians who intervene in these matters. The Minister will recall that when we were in Government we created the office of the DPP as an independent office and created a situation in which any attempt to interfere with the DPP in carrying out his functions would itself be an offence. That has stopped that particular loophole. But it is quite evident that what the Garda say is that it has merely transferred the attempts to interfere at a lower level——