Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I move to points 24 and 25 on staffing. Will the officials give me a breakdown of how many of their total staff count are dedicated to carrying out inspections? They can express that as a whole-time equivalent or whatever way they want. A 14% vacancy rate was alluded to. That is not a small number given the seriousness of the work. Will the officials give us a breakdown of what the roles are? Are they existing roles people have resigned or retired from? If staff have resigned rather than retired I would like to know the difference. Is there anything that can be done either at the committee or by Government to accelerate the filling of these roles?

There was also reference to pay being a barrier. We could be here all day comparing the public service to the private sector and I know well the differences between both. I imagine it is very hard to find comparators, but can the officials give us an idea of the kind of comparable salaries that exist in the private sector for this specialised and technical work? Maybe they can also give us an idea about the terms and conditions. If it is the case the HSA is falling down in terms of private sector comparators or losing people to the private sector, that is the kind of information I am interested in.