Mr. John McCarthy:

Within my own division, within the economic division, there are about 20 positions for economists. Not all of those are filled at the moment. I have about 15 people on my team. There are a number of vacancies including one crucial vacancy on the macro-economics side. I am holding that vacancy for the next month or two because there is an excellent economist employed in the Department but in another division, so I am willing to wait. When his job finishes there he will move across.

I think you need to look beyond the economic division as well, there are economists elsewhere in the Department and I also think it's important to highlight the fact that the role of the Irish Government economic and evaluation service, which was established I think in about 2011 or 2012, it is situated within the Department of Public Expenditure and the rational for this is to create an economic service for the Civil Service as a whole. So there has been a large amount of recruitment there both at the AO level, there is currently recruitment ongoing at the AP level so the rationale and I'll finish here is to create a career structure for economists all the way up to and including chief economist which is at the assistant secretary grade.