Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Several points have been raised and prior to the Minister replying I want to add to them. The Oireachtas Library and Research Service has been mentioned. This service is fine for planning a Bill in the long term but if we get an agenda on Thursday that will mean speaking on seven different policy areas on Tuesday, and then we receive phone calls all day Monday about it, they will be dealt with by the secretarial assistants of Senators who clearly are parliamentary assistants. I know there are strong feelings about this across the House because we passed a motion collectively in 2019 supporting the claim and the call of the secretarial assistants. In being true to that motion, we cannot take any backward step. We need to be clear that we are pushing forward and want more. On the question of whether we vote on this recommendation, it depends on the answer of the Minister; we cannot simply say we know everybody means the best, because it has been too long. We need to be getting a clear message on what we are asking for. It will not be enough to have a doubling of some percentage or knocking one or two things together. There are very clear requests on changes to the scale for secretarial assistants, the compression of scale and the addition of scale. I am aware that the Minister cannot tell us he is going to achieve all these things now but we need to be clear that, when he says he is engaging and interested in engaging, he is not just talking about changes to the scale but also about the regrading point, which is fundamental to every Senator in this House.

The other area where we need to have a clear understanding from the Minister concerns what exactly the engagement with the commission will look like. The Minister should accept recommendation No. 1 because it is harmless. It simply asks that he come back in six months. I hope he is enthusiastic about accepting it because he plans to come back in six months with a very good story for us on the resolution of this issue. Perhaps he might indicate that to us.

One of the only reasons for not pressing the other recommendations will be a commitment to resolve this matter earlier than indicated in the timelines in the amendments. This is important. We cannot afford to let this become a long-term process. This started in the last Oireachtas. I was a Member of the last Oireachtas when we passed a motion after the Seanad reform committee made the recommendation. Of four secretarial assistants who led the campaign in the last Oireachtas and were actively involved in our group, one lost their job because their Member was not re-elected, another lost their job because their Member did not stand again, and two left because the wages were completely unsustainable, even though they were incredibly committed to our work. We cannot afford to have this kicked to touch for six or eight months or year and a half, at which time we will have a new crop of secretarial assistants. However, now that everybody in the country knows it is such a terribly paid job, who will go for it?

Can we try to resolve this in the next three months? Committing to this would be a really good argument for our not pressing these recommendations, with their timelines of six and eight months. That is what I hope to hear from the Minister in his responses to us.