Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

I thank the Deputy and I appreciate his opening comments. We have grown hugely as an organisation, as he rightly reflected, in terms of the scale of demands that we are managing. We are on a very fast growth path in terms of our own staffing resources. The Comptroller and Auditor General referenced the staffing figures from the beginning of 2022 in comparison to the end of that year. We have grown our numbers to approximately 780 at this point. There has been significant growth in numbers over the past two years. We have engaged our own direct recruitment partner to assist us in doing that over the period and tried to reduce our reliance on the Public Appointments Service because of our overall scale of recruitment. We have been identified as a priority by the PAS for the filling of vacancies over the past two years. We have done our own direct recruitment to try to supplement that and we have also engaged with third-party partner providers in a number of areas to assist us in filling capacity gaps. If we take the example of the processing of invoices, which was referenced earlier in the context of the accounts, the scaling up of demands on the Department on that front required an organisational response in order for us to be able to manage the scale of demands that materialised. That response involved third-party partner providers being brought in to assist us. We have tried to be as creative as we can be as an organisation and to bring as much resource as possible to bear on the challenge we face. We have partnered with others where that option was available to us.

We have an ambitious workforce plan continuing across this year and into next year in terms of further recruitment plans and we do have support from the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform in respect of our needs on that front.