Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 January 2018
154. Deputy Niall Collins asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the number of additional staff to be taken on in her Department and all individual State agencies and bodies under her aegis in 2018; the cost of hiring additional staff in her Department and each individual State agency and body, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2732/18]
View answerThe 2018 Revised Estimates Volume – or REV - has been finalised, and is now available on the website of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
An additional €3 million in Pay was secured in Budget 2018 for my Department’s Vote to further assist in our response to the evolving Brexit scenario and dealing with regulatory challenges. It will enable the Department and its Agencies to recruit a further forty to fifty staff to supplement existing staffing numbers. Specifically, this additional €3 million pay allocation has been factored in to the respective pay ceilings for the Department and Agencies as follows:
• Enterprise Ireland (an additional €1.3m),
• IDA Ireland (an additional €700k),
• Science Foundation Ireland (an additional €400k),
• the Health and Safety Authority (an additional €400k)
• Department (an additional €200k).
Furthermore, in the 2018 REV process, an amount of €4m in the IDA’s capital monies has been reclassified to Pay to sustain the IDA’s “Winning Abroad Programme”. This further increases the IDA staffing numbers by 35 posts.
It is not possible to be specific on the distribution of the additional posts across my Department and each State Agency in 2018 as staffing resources are reviewed as an ongoing priority to ensure my Department’s continued ability to facilitate the wide mission and volume of work in a range of challenging policy areas.
My Department engages on an ongoing basis in workforce planning within the context of allocated funding, and with reallocation of staff across my Department as the needs of business units evolve. This will continue during 2018 with ongoing regular reviews of the appropriate staffing across my Department in response to emerging priorities.
I might also mention that my Department entered 2018 with a number of vacancies to be filled through recruitment in conjunction with the Public Appointments Service and/or advertising certain posts across the Civil Service to be filled under the Civil Service mobility programme. Therefore, it is difficult to be precise as to how staffing levels will move during the year. Nonetheless, I can inform the Deputy that staffing levels are closely monitored to ensure that we remain within pay-budget limits agreed with the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform having regard to key priorities and our workforce planning exercise.
Each Agency is provided with an overall Pay ceiling within which they have some flexibility to align their staffing resources to manage their overall operations and priorities. In addition, some Agencies also have Own Resource Income, such as Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Health and Safety Authority and the National Standards Authority of Ireland, which they may wish to utilise to support their particular priority areas, be that to cover operational Pay costs or some Non-Pay costs, such as running promotional and awareness campaigns, to be agreed with my Department. As with the Department itself, responding to individual key strategic priorities and individual workforce planning exercises, each Agency works with my Department to ensure each remains within agreed pay-budget limits.
