Ms Shirley Comerford:

As Ms Lyons has said, we assign candidates where vacancies arise. There are situations within regional panels, which we also have, where candidates will want to stay, understandably, in the region where they live. We will offer people roles as they come up within the regions. There are some roles, not so much at the generalist level but at the more senior levels, where there is a requirement for Irish, in which case we will recruit candidates with that Irish proficiency for those roles.

On the generalist side, we have roles in the Gaeltacht regions and in the HSE etc. Candidates themselves will consider many things when we offer them roles, including where they are going to be located and what the work is going to involve. Our role is to get people in the door. We have a volume of requests that come in from all over the system. We try to meet those requirements, but also those from the candidates’ perspective because these are their day-to-day jobs and it is important as well that they are in roles that they want to be in.

While creating a level playing field for everybody, we try to take into account opportunities where we can match both what the candidate and the client want.