Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will focus on Part 7 of the Bill, which contains provisions on the retirement age of our uniformed services. The Bill will potentially set a concerning precedent, where the retirement age of our uniformed servicemen and women is left to the whim of the relevant Minister of the day without any explicit obligation to consult the workers it impacts or their representative bodies. Consultation is key. I thank colleagues in SIPTU for facilitating us in the Labour Party in recent days with a greater understanding of the potential impact of a certain provision of this legislation for uniformed services members across the spectrum. While some uniformed services initially gave a guarded welcome to pronouncements from various Ministers that the age of retirement would be raised to 62, voluntarily and without the loss of fast accrual, this is not what is proposed in the legislation. The primary legislation makes no explicit mention of a specific upper age limit and simply leaves the power to set the upper age limit of retirement at whatever the appropriate Minister feels it should be. It is not in any way clear that any Minister will be bound to consult those affected if and when future changes are made to mandatory retirement ages. In my view, this is a sleight of hand on the part of the Government, which is attempting to railroad through the legislation in the dying days of this Dáil session and hoping that nobody would notice. We have noticed and we are deeply concerned, as are various uniformed services representatives. I am signalling our intention to propose a variety of amendments on Committee Stage and potentially subsequently on Report Stage, to protect the interests into the future of our servicemen and women and insist they would at least be consulted and engaged with in a meaningful way when such fundamental changes to their terms and conditions of employment are likely to be made. I was flabbergasted that a change such as that proposed in this legislation could be contemplated without any formal engagement whatsoever. It really is appalling in terms of industrial relations practice. It is something that we believe should be finessed and reviewed. Although not an area for which the Minister for Justice is responsible, we note in respect of the Defence Forces a pattern of behaviour on the part of this Government where it makes unilateral decisions about how our Defence Forces are managed and planned, which is extremely concerning.

The debate on this Bill in the Seanad last week seems to have been short, I think by design. It was incredible. There was little opportunity for Senators to be properly briefed on the import of this. I think Government was hoping these changes would simply be waved through without any fuss. The ICTU-affiliated bodies representing members in the uniformed services are very concerned at the content of the Bill and the manner in which it is being introduced. While many of the affiliates in general welcome an optional extension of the retirement age, the open-ended nature of the Bill and the discretion granted to individual Ministers potentially leaves the door open to further increases in the retirement age for newer entrants and an effective end to the principle of fast accrual that underpins these services. This is a very real fear and in our view it is not without foundation.

The fast accrual benefit was introduced to ensure that front-line services and operations are protected. It was also a recognition that the job of work that uniformed services members do is very different. They are unique in the public service. That is reflected in the fast accrual system. There is a strong and specific fear that the Bill as worded will provide line Ministers for these services with powers to alter and erode the terms and conditions of our men and women in uniform, specifically their retirement ages. I draw the Minister's attention to Part 7, section 9(b), which proposes to insert into section 8 of the Civil Service Regulation Act 1956 a new subsection(1A) providing that:

The Minister for Justice [in this case, the Minister herself, when it relates to services under her management] may, with the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, make regulations relating to the retirement of officers to whom the Act of 1919 applies, including specifying a retirement age of such officers, being an age that is higher than 60 years and not exceeding the normal retirement age (within the meaning of section 13(1) of the Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and Other Provisions) Act 2012).

Sections 10 and 11(b) make similar provisions. In our view, these sections would need to be deleted or amended in such a way as to clearly set out a maximum retirement age or otherwise curtail the power the Bill proposes to bestow on the Minister to determine the retirement age. Alternatively, a provision could be inserted in the legislation that would oblige future Ministers to consult and engage meaningfully with the relevant representative bodies and agree a framework within which arrangements would be made in respect of the revision of retirement age into the future. That is a proposition that the Minister should fully consider in advance of Committee Stage. We are open to engagement with the Minister on that. There is also a general concern that the Government is pushing through changes in the pension arrangements for a cohort of public services in this manner without giving the staff representative bodies time to fully consider the impact of these changes, let alone to consult on them.

The implications of all of this for the future of the fast accrual pension scheme are potentially grave. That, and the complexities surrounding pension arrangements, should require a reasonable period for consultation. As it stands, under the Bill once people stay after the age of 60, fast accrual goes and they are then subject to the normal standard accrual position up to the age of 62. A significant problem facing new entrants to the fast accrual services is that they have no access to State pension benefits if they retire at their contractual retirement age. An extension of the retirement age is an issue of which we are all aware. There are implications in terms of State pension benefits, something that needs to be considered in the future.

For many in these services, working past the current retirement age will simply not be an option given the toll these jobs often take. There is a reason that retirement ages are lower in these services and those reasons have not gone away. If Ministers think this is some kind of radical fix for the recruitment and retention crisis in the uniformed services, they are wrong. This is not the point at which to start.

The Minister, along with her colleagues, needs to review this, listen respectfully to the views and concerns of representative associations and trade unions and change course. There is now a degree of discord with uniformed services members. That is regrettable and could have been avoided. Very serious concerns have been expressed to us and others in the House and these issues ought not to have arisen. That they have arisen is proof positive, if proof was in fact needed, that there are industrial relations and engagement issues with uniformed services members that need to be addressed by the Government.

As I said earlier, there is a pattern of behaviour that is being repeated in terms of the way in which this particular issue has been handled. The Minister should change course with her Government colleagues. Work needs to be done on the employer side to improve the industrial relations environment with our crucial uniformed services members who are serving this State every single day.

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