Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 19 January 2017
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Statement of Strategy 2017: Department of Finance
10:00 am
Mr. Derek Moran:
That is always the challenge. Let me be honest about that. We have been beefing up the economic functions for a while. Two or three years ago, there might have been one functional area, namely, the macroeconomy. There are now three, including microeconomy, which entails research, analysis and modelling. With the economy recovering, it has been difficult to expand an organisation when one must compete with outsiders, but we are doing our best to push on that front. We have a high turnover rate, which is a good thing at one level, in that we are refreshing our staff, improving qualifications and so forth, but we must manage the process within that context. We have a core staff of approximately 300. Ideally, I would like to be at 330. We started out with a manpower plan last year and ended up at ten or 15 below it. We are continuing to pursue it.
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