Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I begin by placing on the record my appreciation to the Minister for coming personally to the House to deal with the Commencement matter relating to the pay of our secretarial assistants.I would like to speak about the job that the Minister’s Department has done since the financial crisis. None of us likes the job that the Department does because it impacts everything we try to do, but it does the job for the public good and in order to keep this State going. It helped us get out of crisis. While I sometimes think the Department should loosen the reins a little bit now, I understand everything that was done in the past was done with a view to getting this country back on its feet. For that reason, I understand the position the Department takes.

In the past, the role of the Seanad was largely seen as a part-time role and secretarial assistants were provided as such. First and foremost, the idea was that the Seanad would not involve itself in local politics, but would act at the level of national politics. I want to take it from that perspective. My colleague Senator Higgins has outlined the work our secretarial assistants and personal assistants do for us. You could not quantify that work. Each assistant is everything from a PhD researcher, through to a secretary and anything in between. They have a great level of commitment. If this House sits until 8 p.m., our assistants are there to assist us the whole way through. It is part of the job they do and it is part of what they take on when they take the job.

I understand that one of the chief concerns in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is about the knock-on effects if we make a change to the terms and conditions of employment. The role of the Department is to see into the future and see if there will be knock-on effects. I suggest to the Minister that looking after the secretarial assistants will have no knock-on effects. I appreciate that the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission must come to the Minister and not the other way around. When the commission comes with a proposal, I hope it will involve regrading all our people as personal assistants in the same salary category as those who work in the Dáil. The reason for that is quite clear: the work they do is not secretarial work; it is far more important than that. As my colleague Senator Higgins has said, 50% of the debate on legislation happens in this House and all legislation in this country passes through this House. Therefore, this House is of equal standing to the Dáil in national politics with respect to legislation. If somebody makes the argument to the Minister that if we do this, there will be demands from A,B,C and D, he must be assured that cannot be the case because the group we are talking about is unique to us.

The Government, in its wisdom, issued a statutory instrument in 2012 or 2013. It impacted me when I came here. I think I was the first Member of the Seanad who was prevented from carrying on my professional career when I came here. I had to choose between taking my seat in the Oireachtas, which involved taking a career break, or refusing the seat and going back to my teaching job. The Oireachtas told me that this was a full-time job. It told me that if it is a full-time job for me, it will certainly be a full-time job for my assistant. That is why I believe the argument we are putting forward, which is not against the Minister’s Bill, is one that the commission needs to listen to. The commission needs to come to the Minister with a proposal. Recommendation No. 1 is vitally important because it will ensure the Minister is in a position to come back to the Oireachtas and tell us within six months what has been done. I will explain one of the key reasons for that proposal. I was on the commission in the last Seanad. We brought this up in 2017, if I am not mistaken, but nothing has been done with it since then. That is simply not good enough.

The Minister made the position of his Department very clear when he spoke here the other day. I fully respect that he can do nothing until somebody comes to him with a proposal. It is up to the commission to come to him. In this Bill, he is making additional finances available to the Oireachtas to carry out the work it does. It is up to the commission to look at how that finance can be used to regrade our secretarial assistants as personal assistants and put them on the same salary scale as personal assistants in the Dáil. I think it is fair that we do not have two secretarial assistants. One is quite sufficient for us, but the one we have must be recognised as a personal assistant and not as a secretarial assistant.

I spent the last years of my working life prior to coming into the Oireachtas at the head of a trade union. I am fully aware of the arguments that will be made with respect to contagion, knock-on effects and all of that. In this case, I defy anybody to put an argument to me that says this will impact any other personnel involved in administration in this House. It is only those who work for Members of the Seanad we are talking about. I could spend all day talking about what my particular employee does. I do not like to think of her as an employee. I think of her as a partner. She is just a poorly paid partner. The work she does keeps me afloat, keeps me at the right meetings at the right time and makes sure that when legislation is coming down the tracks, I am aware of it and have had a chance to go through it, consider amendments, table my own amendments and seek cross-House participation or support in anything I try to do. In fairness, this House does that rather well. I will leave it at that. The argument we are putting forward today is to the commission, through the Minister, in the hope that the commission will come back to him and he will be able to fulfil recommendations Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive.