Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. It is inevitable that there should be some change regarding public service and Civil Service appointments.

The Bill provides for the establishment of a committee and a commission. Members of this House or those nominated to stand as candidates for the European Parliament, the Seanad or the Dáil are prohibited from sitting on the commission. I note that the Ceann Comhairle is a member of the commission. How can the Minister reconcile that with these provisions since the Ceann Comhairle is nominated by a political party?

The Bill is a very complicated measure for appointing people to the public service and to the Civil Service and it will create a bonanza for recruitment agencies who will be able to act on behalf of local authorities, health boards, the Civil Service and so on. The Bill also provides that candidates for a position may have to pay a fee. The recruitment agency may charge a fee to both the candidates and the recruiting body for whom it is acting. These complicated provisions broaden out the recruitment of civil and public servants while keeping them at arm's length.

I have no problem with tightening up some areas. However, a retrograde step was taken in the local government sector when Better Local Government was being introduced. County managers are allowed to set up interview boards for the recruitment of directors of services and for recruitment to other specific areas to the detriment of the local authority system. There are deep divisions within local authorities. Half of the members of the workforce are happy because they were promoted but the other half are unhappy because they were not. I hope a similar scenario will not develop when this Bill is passed.

I envisage that county managers, CEOs of health boards and so on will operate different standards. In some cases local authorities will themselves recruit under licence while in other areas similar positions will be processed through recruitment agencies. That will create a double standard and it is a retrograde step. There will also be double standards regarding some positions within a specific local authority. Some positions will be filled by the county manager under licence while a similar position will be filled by a recruitment agency. That is not an even playing pitch. Heretofore, a local appointments commission was set up under the auspices of the Civil Service. Whether we liked it or not, everyone knew what was in store for them. Under the Bill different standards will apply as there will be many different recruitment agencies. There will be no even standard no matter how good the procedures put in place by the commission and the committee.

A good system is in place although there is no doubt that it needed to be tweaked a little. The Minister should have strengthened the procedures that were in place for public service appointments, rather than take the approach set out in the Bill. He has taken a complicated route where he will be granting many licences to different people under the direction of a commission to be set up. There is, therefore, a big responsibility on the commission to set the ground work for those that are granted licences to recruit the kind of people who did a great service to this country last week on the European stage.

It is very important that the procedures to be put in place are completely independent. It will be difficult for them to be as independent as we wish because they will lead to a plethora of recruitment agencies. How will they all operate under the guidance of the commission? I am not sure it will work as the Minister intends. There is much time left to modify the Bill even further. It needs to be done. The Minister should ascertain how satisfied are the employees of local authorities with promotion and recruitment under Better Local Government over the last few years. He should then take it from there.