Nearly 100 Dáil and Seanad secretaries have issued strike notice over plans by the Houses of the Oireachtas to hire nearly 200 new personal assistants early next year. Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, reports.
The secretaries, who are demanding the opportunity to apply for the new posts worth nearly €45,000 a year, voted by a ratio of 12 to 1 yesterday in favour of protective notice at a meeting at lunchtime yesterday.
In a major report in 2001, international consultants warned that TDs and senators were badly under-staffed compared to their counterparts in every other parliament in the world.
Under the current plan, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission wants to hire an extra staffer, at up to €44,000 a year, for Opposition and Government backbench TDs, along with greater back-up for senators.
In addition, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has also increased the staffing of Oireachtas committees, while the numbers of ushers and other support staff has also increased.
Though TDs and senators will have the final choice on who fills the post, the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission will draw up a list of qualifying criteria to be met by all candidates.
But some secretaries insist TDs have told them that they already chosen someone to fill the job once it is cleared by the Department of Finance in coming weeks.
"In some cases, they have made it perfectly clear that they will be hiring a member of their own family, or someone who is very close to them politically in their constituency," one secretary privately complained last night.
The Oireachtas secretaries, whose starting pay is €18,000 a year, insist that the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has not had formal contact with them since last July.
SIPTU official Mr Gerry Flanagan said he had written to the Commission after the secretaries' last union meeting nearly a fortnight ago. "I have had no response to that letter," he claimed.
He said the secretaries wanted the right to be able to apply for the new postings, the right to appeal if they believed they had unfairly lost out and the right to full training if they did get the job.
The Deloitte & Touche consultants' report, he said, found some secretaries were effectively conducting the duties of the new post, which included research, press relations and preparation of amendments.
Privately, however, some secretaries make little secret of their belief that they should be put on the new grades automatically and that another person should then be hired on their current, much lower rate of pay.
Last night a source close to the commission insisted, however, that one of its officials had been in touch with Mr Flanagan last week.
Under the plan, TDs can hire one extra staffer or take one of a number of other options, including pooling allowances to hire specialists on a much higher rate of pay.
TDs could also opt to take a €33,511 annual fund to hire specialists as required on a fully-vouched basis, or retain a €8,888 secretarial allowance and take a €9,525 allowance to contract expert services as needed.
Senators, on the other hand, can choose one of three options.
They can have a full-time secretary each, instead of having to share one between two of them.
Second, they can take a fully-vouched €16,755 parliamentary allowance to pay for specialist services as required.
Last, they can retain the secretarial allowance, for which they do not produce receipts and get some extra secretarial help in Leinster House amounting to "an additional 25 per cent of a secretarial assistant".