Mr. John Murphy:

I thank the Chairman. It is important to put our resourcing in the context of the operating priorities we have had since 2011. The statement of strategy for the Department from 2012 to 2014 set out a mission and key goals for the Department on the taking of office by the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton.

The mission the Minister set was to support the creation of good jobs by promoting the development of a competitive business environment in which enterprises will operate to high standards and grow in sustainable markets. Our Department was structured to meet this mission, and resources in a resource-constrained environment were allocated accordingly. Our strategy sought to clearly articulate the challenges facing the organisation, identify the options for meeting those challenges and plot the milestones towards delivering solutions. In framing our mission in 2011, the Department had particular regard for the Programme for Government priorities, especially employment creation, against a backdrop of a very challenging economic context framed by acute financial and human resource constraints. In summary, our mission was centred on a strategy for jobs, with an ambitious vision of Ireland having 2 million people in work by 2020.

The key supporting goals for that jobs mission were framed around getting the business environment right and helping enterprises to develop their own potential. Those goals, and therefore priority areas for the allocation of resources, both financial and staffing, were set as championing enterprise through making Ireland the best small country in which to do business and enlisting the widest possible support within and outside Government for this goal and, secondly, improving competitiveness and access to finance to regain the competitive edge necessary to underpin a successful small open economy. The third goal focused on enterprise development and jobs and maximising jobs growth, especially through the development of a strong indigenous enterprise base, the attraction of foreign direct investment and the development of cross-enterprise networks. The fourth goal was to increase exports and to support enterprises achieve challenging export targets. The fifth goal focused on regulation and making markets, including the labour markets, work more efficiently through smart regulation which encouraged innovation, keen competition, high standards of compliance and consumer protection, but without unnecessary regulatory costs. A further goal focused on innovation and developing a broad based innovation strategy to make our enterprises more competitive and developing sectors with potential so as to prioritise sectors of opportunity and systematically remove obstacles and develop enabling policies.

That jobs mission and those key supporting goals informed decisions, since 2011, and resource allocation across the Department and our agencies. Such resource prioritisation was a key management challenge for the Department, and for our individual agencies, at a time when resources were being reduced as the national finances were being brought into better shape. Since the economic downturn in 2008, the Department has had to operate, as have all publicly-funded agencies, in an environment of reduced resources.

The well known phrase of "doing more with less" was a goal. Our Department saw its resources reduced from approximately €2 billion, which included the budget for FÁS and related activity, to €804 million in 2014 and from 1,075 posts to 802 by the end of 2014. Some 200 posts were lost separate to the FÁS related Departmental transfers. It is on record that the Department advised the Minister that it had, in its view, reached the limit of its capacity to downsize while delivering the Government's ambitious agenda on the jobs, regulatory, enforcement activity and related fronts. On the reduction of posts, the net loss of 200 staff, since the moratorium on recruitment was introduced in 2009, is a decrease of over 20%. Naturally, as a result of that decrease in staffing, pressure points have developed in the Department as well as in some of our agencies. This has required careful workforce planning responses such as, for example, the assignment of additional resources to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement at the height of its work in the Anglo and related investigations. In addition, we proactively prioritised tasks to match the reduced staffing levels as well as working with staff to work smarter and more efficiently, including, for example, streamlining business processes for the workplace relations bodies and merging various activities in the employment permit application process. Also, on foot of Government decisions and at the request of the Minister, Forfás was reorganised and its core policy staff integrated into the Department.

That decision was taken to streamline policy-making on the enterprise, science, technology and innovation and broad competitiveness agenda and to enhance the Department's capacity to directly influence those key areas of policy across other Departments and agencies which would be crucial to the delivery of the action plan for jobs and fostering economic recovery.

The priority since 2011 has centred on the jobs agenda in particular and ever more scarce resources have been allocated accordingly in the context of aggregate resources reducing significantly. We have taken steps to address that shortage of resources and have worked with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to obtain sanctions to fill critical posts because now that we have come below the employment control framework target that was set for us we are in a position to do that. We have received sanction to fill several critical vacancies. We are in the process of doing that at principal and assistant principal level and at other grades. We will also, for the first time in five years, recruit at the recruitment grade levels in the new year.