Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in pressure on public service organisations to maximise the use of scarce resources and do more with less. Mechanisms are already in place to make heads of organisations accountable in that regard. In that context, it is clearly in the best interests of public sector organisations to ensure their staff are adequately trained for the roles to which they are assigned. The training and development requirements of staff are addressed in a variety of ways by the public sector bodies. For example, a considerable amount of new entrants' time is devoted to on the job learning. More formally, public sector bodies monitor the learning and development needs of their staff through the performance management and development system of which the learning and development plan is a fundamental element.

One of the core principles of the performance management development system, PMDS, is fostering career progression through continual learning and development. Therefore, an elaborate training process is in place. I do not know if the Deputy has had a chance to examine PeoplePoint, in Clonskeagh, which is one of the new organisations we have created. Approximately 200 people are there now and everybody was trained in advance of moving. They all think that pre-training before taking up an assignment is an extraordinarily important part of redeployment. That will be the case across the public service.