Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that in the Civil Service that is not the case but I would encourage Mr. Moloney to take it to the next step. Let us have a bird’s eye view of where we are at with secondments, which is an important role in the transferring of experience and so on. I would like to know if there are people who have been seconded for ten years and if so, perhaps those should be permanent positions now. I know of a case of a former Deputy who was a member of Deputy Durkan’s party and who used to be my headmaster. The person who replaced him in the school was temporary. That is happening in the public sector. People with professional degrees in our health sector, having been five or six years in the position, are not able to get a permanent contract because the position they are filling was vacated by somebody who was seconded to another position. Two jobs of work need to be done. We need to get an idea of where we are at with secondments and with the backfilling of roles. We also need to apply the same principles Mr. Moloney mentioned that apply to the Civil Service to the public sector and those publicly funded bodies. That would be helpful in recruiting and retaining some of those key personnel we need. I thank Mr. Moloney for that.