The Public Appointments Service is the independent, centralised recruitment agency for the civil and public service and conducts Temporary Clerical Officer competitions to fill vacancies which may arise during the year in various departments and locations around the country.
I understand from the Public Appointments Service that the 2016 competition attracted over 11,500 applications. Following the first stage of the selection process candidates were ranked in line with their performance. Based on the number of likely vacancies in their selected location, candidates are invited to interview in order of their ranking from Stage 1.
In the case mentioned, an invitation to interview issued by email. It would appear however that the individual's personal email account has filters resulting in emails from publicjobs.ie being blocked or directed to Junk/Spam email folders. The Public Appointments Service advised candidates at the outset of the competition to add publicjobs.ie to their safe senders to avoid such situations arising. The candidate referred to has been contacted directly and the matter has been resolved.