Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some of the information and statements made by Deputy Brady are factually incorrect with regard to branch managers. I do not mean to be facetious when I respond to the Deputy. I am unsure who has told Deputy Brady that the workload has increased, but it has actually drastically decreased in recent years because our jobseekers have drastically decreased. The workload of our branch managers has thankfully decreased from a jobseekers perspective, as has the workload of all the actual offices that are Department offices rather than branch offices. Since they get paid on a work basis the revenue going into those branches has dropped in recent years because the workload has dropped. That is why we sought to have a conversation with those involved. We wanted to talk about giving them an increase in what they are being paid currently on the current workload for potentially changing practices and using more online technology and genuinely having a renegotiation.

Those negotiations were taking place productively but not without some difficulty - I do not think any negotiations are ever as sweet and pie. Anyway, we had a grand conversation last year. We came to an agreement shortly after Christmas. The reason we had to pull out at that stage was because we received legal advice that what we were doing was close to touching the procurement rules. It was right up to the nose and stretching to being illegal in so far as we were renegotiating a contract without actually putting it out to full public tender.

Now, we have pulled back temporarily to check the legal advice. We have now gone back into negotiations with the branch managers' association and the talks are being chaired by Kevin Duffy. I figure we are close to closing an agreement. I imagine it will happen if not in a matter of days then definitely within a matter of weeks.

The talks have been constructive. Under the final deal, when we reach it, the figure will be significantly higher than the figure mentioned by Deputy Brady. This is because of the negotiations that we have had, as chaired by Kevin Duffy in recent months. We expect a successful outcome.

Anyway, it is certainly not because their workload has increased. It is because their workload has decreased. Indeed, it has decreased drastically in recent years because the live register has decreased drastically, thankfully.

With respect, Deputy Brady and I do not agree on a great deal. I do not think that mandatory retirement is set out in law. Deputy Brady seems to think it is. I definitely know that in practice people are made to retire at 65 years of age, but that is because of what their contract says and that is what is being carried out. What we need to try to do is to change their contracts.

Much as Deputy Brady might have great faith in me and might think that I am running the whole shop, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, is the person responsible for all public sector employees and he is the person responsible for bringing forward the legislation. I believe he has brought forward heads of the Bill. He will bring it to the relevant committee to tease through what the actual negotiations had been with unions and public sector representative bodies. The role from his perspective is to recognise that people in the public sector are living longer healthier lives and want to contribute. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, wants to find a mechanism to say that if they want to stay working until they are 70 years of age, they can do so. Again, I do not have that responsibility.

I agree with Deputy Brady completely with regard to the advocacy group and the work Age Action Ireland does. I think it is an incredible company. I think the people the company works with and for are among the most good-natured group of people we have as citizens in the country. We all know that woe betides anyone who messes with them. Such a person will feel a real clip on the ear. That is why I like working with Age Action Ireland. The company is incredibly proactive and exceptionally reasonable. Those involved do a great deal of helping and assisting when things need to be changed. They were most helpful and co-operative with me during the time I needed their help. I am keen to put my thanks to them on record.

I get the feeling some Deputies believe that when we start the public consultation on the total contributions model we will already have an end game in mind, but we do not. The reason we are going to do a comprehensive public consultation process is to arrive at the end game. This is one of the most sizeable reforms that we have seen to a particularly large policy in many years and we want to get it right.

The only way we will get this right is by listening to all of the people who will be impacted by it. That includes pensioners and advocacy organisations, and might include a person in their 20s or a person in their 50s or 60s. We will carry out a very public consultation process whereby any of the impacts, whether on self-employed people or people who are retired already and who may be able to move to the total contributions category if there is a window, will be laid out. That will help us achieve the desired outcome. There will be straw men put out so that we can go up and down the options and have a look at what it would look like, based on various suggestions, but we certainly have no end game in sight yet. That will be very much determined by everybody's input over the next couple of months. I hope to be in a position by the end of this year where we can all collectively say what we want, and where we will all feel that we have had some sort of valuable input into what the retirement situation will be when we all retire in a few years.

I am always baffled when people think that one scheme is in competition with another scheme. The new figures have been signed off on by Cabinet today, and the live register is consistently going down. The aim of the Department is to help the 230,000 people still on the live register to get back to work, in the most effective way we can. In some instances that will mean sending people to jobs clubs. It might mean that people are sent to JobsPlus, or that they are put on a Tús scheme, which is compulsory. For some people it might mean community employment, CE, which is entirely voluntary. Deputies are being told that CE schemes are reporting that people are not being referred to CE schemes. The Department never referred people to CE schemes. It is an entirely voluntary scheme. The jobs are advertised and people on the live register apply for those jobs. That has not changed. We are sending people with huge ambition to JobPath in their tens of thousands because we want those people - particularly the people who are long-term unemployed - in the workforce, because that is what they want. I make no apologies for wanting to help people who present themselves as looking for work to help them get the type of work and the type of training they need to get the kind of job they want to get. However, no course or scheme is in competition with another. There are a variety of places and a variety of schemes-----