Ms Laura Burke:

We are looking for 24 staff mainly for new functions. The agency has been asked to carry out a number of new functions, for example, water abstraction licensing, regulation of medium combustion plants and review of urban wastewater licences. Although we had temporary staff when the urban wastewater licences were originally issued, those staff are now gone. Article 27 and 28 decisions are now under our remit as well. They concern by-products and end of waste, which are particularly important in the context of the construction sector in terms of what happens to waste and whether something is waste or a by-product. We also have a backlog of licence applications. We have 17 staff doing assessments of licence applications across industrial emissions, waste and a variety of other things, and we have more applications coming in than we can get out the other side of the door. These are very complex applications. We have to consider environmental impact assessment, appropriate assessment, etc.

That is one area. The other main area is enforcement. We are currently engaging with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment to see how we can better support local authority waste enforcement and drive further rigorous enforcement in waste in Ireland. There are other areas as well, but those are the two key areas.