Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With great respect to my good friend, Senator Higgins, who is well motivated on these issues, I cannot see the difficulty with the personal progression plan. The plan is to establish what the person's position is in respect of education and personal development, in the sense of self-confidence and self-awareness, or where the person is on that ladder, for want of a better term, and to try to work out an empowerment process for the person in terms of education and learning to take the person further. If the administrators of such a plan were abusing their position and engaging in inappropriate, intrusive questioning or inappropriate activity, the person would have recourse to the courts and the normal constraints of the State. In other words, they would be subject to the law of the land if it were to come under the heading of some sort of abuse. One assumes that would seldom happen or is most unlikely to happen, but in the sad event of it happening there would be recourse to the law. The departmental officials would see it as their duty to interfere and get rid of a private operator who was acting inappropriately.

The function of such a plan usually would be to establish somebody's aptitudes, skill sets, possibilities for the future and their potential and to help guide them onto that path. It would be sad if people were just being sent off down a particular avenue. I doubt that would be the case. I would have thought, and perhaps the Minister will elucidate this, there would be a supervisory element at senior Civil Service level whereby somebody would be monitoring the nature of these plans or monitoring the operation in a random way. However, one would assume that anybody who is successfully designated to do this work would have the level of responsibility and circumspection not to abuse that position. If that person does, the full rigours of the law should be applied. If they are private contractors, they should immediately lose their contract if they are misappropriating or doing the wrong thing. I believe a progression plan should be embraced as a good thing, with the person's personal development built on it.