Mr. Ger Deering:

We are doing a number of things. The problem is that there is so much recruiting taking place across the public service.

What one finds very often is that people will have applied for jobs maybe with us or with somebody else possibly even at a different level. We recruit them and they come in to us where we have seen people leaving even after a few weeks. They may say they have had an offer from another public body nearer to their home. I know of one very good person who was with us only for a few weeks who we would have loved to have kept. He was from one of the Dublin suburbs. He was on a panel for another public sector body which offered him a job. It ranges from this to where some of our own people who are experienced receiving promotion in other areas. All of the work in investigation, mediation and dispute resolution has grown significantly. One has the Residential Tenancies Board, the Data Protection Commissioner and a whole range of other bodies expanding at the same time. A particular set of circumstances come about. We are more confident that the major surge that happened for a period of time may settle down. We are also putting other measures in place.

A significant issue, to be frank, is that anybody coming into a public sector body has to start on the first point of the scale, whether that is the clerical officer, executive officer, or HEO scale. That can be quite low and challenging for people trying to live in Dublin, particularly if one is coming from the private sector. If one is coming from the public sector and has had five years experience, one will go on to the fifth or sixth point of the scale. If one is coming from the private sector one will start at the bottom of the scale. We get a mix of people and are very happy to get people from the public sector, but we are also very happy to have people coming from the private sector with skills that we can use. This is a problem.