Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 April 2022
343. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the total number of new staff funded by his Department who have taken up their posts in local authority housing departments in recent months by local authority and the position held in tabular form. [18003/22]
Amharc ar fhreagraHousing for All recognises the need to strengthen the capacity of local authorities to initiate, design, plan, develop and manage housing projects. It also commits to making additional resources available to local authorities to further build housing delivery teams.
During 2021, the Housing Delivery Coordination Office engaged with each local authority to identify their additional staff requirements to deliver social housing. Following this engagement, my Department approved funding for over 200 housing posts in local authorities nationally to address social housing. The resource requirements for the four Dublin local authorities with respect to the delivery of social housing are still being examined and further posts will be approved for the Dublin local authorities, as appropriate, when this examination has concluded.
The recruitment and filling of posts in the local authority sector is undertaken both by individual local authorities and the Public Appointments Service. Following the approval of a staffing sanction request it is then a matter for the Chief Executive, who is responsible under Section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001 for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he or she is responsible, to progress the appointment as appropriate.
My Department oversees workforce planning for the local government sector, including the monitoring of local government sector employment levels. To this end, my Department gathers aggregate quarterly data on staff numbers in each local authority on a whole time equivalent basis.
However, granular data, in terms of the number of new staff funded by my Department who have taken up employment at a point in time in each local authority housing department is not collected and consequently is not available. The relevant information should be available from each local authority.
