Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This has been a really welcome and, to a degree, very informative debate. I have no doubt that what the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, said is sincere and genuine, and I have no doubt that the remarks made by the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, are also sincere and genuine. Somebody is missing today, however, and that is the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath. I will return to that particular issue later in my remarks.

It is really welcome that we are having this public debate in our national Parliament about the real-life experience of those who run, manage and operate the services on which we all rely. I was reflecting earlier on my own personal experience this week before attempting to prepare some remarks. My family spent much of Monday morning helping a family member go to a service that is operated by community employment, CE, supervisors and funded by various agencies. I spent most of my day on Monday dealing not with the HSE, the local authority, the Department of Social Protection and so on but with section 39 organisations, some section 56 organisations and other community and voluntary sectors in my community in Drogheda in terms of some very current issues. That is the reality of life for all of us, and the centrality of life for the community and care sector in terms of literally everything we do and the services on which we depend.

I hear what the Minister of State is saying about a process and I will respond to that later. We also need be cautious, however. As Deputy Sherlock said earlier, we parse the remarks made by Ministers in this Chamber, and the Minister of State is to be held account for the remarks she makes. It is on the public record. Citizens across this country look to the Minister of State for leadership they will hold her to account on the commitments she makes. To be perfectly frank, the experience in this Chamber over the last week has been confusing. It has created problems.

We heard the Tánaiste last week make remarks regarding the famed €100 million that was provided for in the budget whereby some of those resources could be used for pay rises for the care and community sector without passing the responsibility on to the sector itself to make those decisions in a very challenging funding environment. That was directly contradicted by the Taoiseach yesterday. To be fair, it was further clarified by the Minister of State yesterday evening in terms of what that resource is designed for. As Deputy Ó Ríordáin said, it is designed to keep the lights and the heating on in the services on which we all depend, and to keep service users safe, warm, fed and healthy over the next very challenging period. It is a cost-of-living measure.

The Minister of State should, however, ask many of our colleagues in the Gallery today about a cost-of-living crisis. They had been experiencing one themselves before the current crisis emerged. There has been no pay increase since 2008 for far too many of them. There is a divergence between their pay and that enjoyed by comparative workers in the public sector. It has been a permanent cost-of-living crisis for tens of thousands of community and voluntary sector workers across the country.

One of the most egregious problems we have had in this society over the last few years is our treatment of community employment supervisors and rural social scheme, RSS, and Tús supervisors. In 2008, a process was set up and a Labour Court recommendation was made in terms of improving the pay, terms and conditions and pension payments and so on. It took until recent years to actually resolve that matter. My colleague, Deputy Howlin, the then Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, established a forum in 2013 to address these issues; a process that was ignored by the previous Administration. Some of those issues have now been resolved. I use that example to illustrate a broader point about the official neglect of the community and voluntary sector and in this country on which we all depend.

Much disinformation has been bandied around over the last few days by various Ministers about the purpose of this particular motion. We were challenged on the notion of whether the Labour Party wants to see all of these community and voluntary sector services brought into public ownership and managed by the public service and Civil Service. We very much do not, and neither does anybody represented in the Gallery today or the trade unions that represent them. As my colleague, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, said, they are agile, flexible services that are designed to respond to community needs in a way the public service and Civil Service will never do. They generally work really well. Frankly, the Government was being disingenuous in making those claims and giving that impression to the wider public. Those confused messages were problematic and created issues over the last few days. Some of those problems need to be addressed and repaired, quite frankly.

One way, though, of making sure the State has to take ownership of and responsibility for managing these organisations and the kinds of services they provide is by not paying their staff and not giving adequate sources to the organisations that manage those staff or those services. Ultimately, if it does not, because of the issue of churn in the sector and the loss of staff and retention of skilled staff, the reality is that the responsibility for managing those services is being done really well by section 39, section 56, section 10 and other organisations that are operating in our communities across the country. The responsibility for the provision of those services will then fall directly on the State itself. Therefore, the State is arguably being penny wise and pound foolish in terms of how it is responding to these issues. The investment needs to be made now.

We have all been subjected time and time again to the mantra from individual Departments, but especially the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, that there is no direct employment relationship between the organisations and individual workers and the line funding Departments or agencies.

We understand and accept that but I remind the House about the following matter. A precedent was set in terms of a process earlier this year by the visionary work that has been organised by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in resourcing the employment regulation order to drive better pay, terms, conditions and retention in the early years sector, using a mechanism re-established by the Labour Party in recent years.

I am pleased to see that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has belatedly joined us. We are disappointed that the Minister or one of his colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform did not take this motion because when I talk about the mantra of repeating the idea that there is no direct employment relationship, that comes from on high. It comes from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and distils its way down to each and every Department. Another Opposition spokesperson made remarks earlier to the effect that you go into a negotiation with a Government agency in the Labour Court, or the WRC previously, and the line Department might decide that it wants to do business with you but the people who are saying they have no direct employment relationship are outside the door with their calculators refusing to do a deal. The reality is there is a relationship and that nonsense and guff needs to be addressed and got over. People need to understand that if a process is to emerge from this, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a critical role to play, on a cross-Government basis, to make sure that any process that might emerge from today will be taken seriously and operated in good faith by everyone.

The Minister of State mentioned the number of people who are working in the sector and there is a great organisation called Benefacts that we all relied on for up-to-date and real-time information on employment numbers, funding and so on for section 39, section 56 and section 10 organisations and for the community and voluntary sector more generally. It has effectively been closed down by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and we can only manage what we measure. That was a real problem and that is something we are going to regret when it comes to us being in a position to analyse the way forward and propose the best way forward for the community and voluntary sector and the workers therein.

We are a solutions-orientated party and we try to be constructive. We fundamentally believe in the principles of collective bargaining and nobody should be afraid of collective bargaining. I am pleased that the Minister has put on the record his commitment to engaging in a process of sorts. The next step, if we are to develop a process in good faith with the trade unions and employers, is to have a fundamental role for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in order for that process to succeed. That should involve a commitment on multi-annual funding for organisations to give certainty and security, not just to staff but to service users themselves. There should also be a commitment, through the public procurement process, to have a drive and move forward in pay parity and convergence of the pay of these workers and public servants into the future. The next statement we need to hear from the Government is a commitment from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, to move this process on. A phone call should be made today to SIPTU, Fórsa and the INMO to deliver on the commitment made by the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and reiterated by the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, today that a process would be entered into to address these issues.

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