Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy has asked about the system of recruitment and the time period over which it will be completed. Recruitment will commence pretty shortly. It is intended that the full 90 will be in place by the end of 2007. I remind the Deputy — Members who have been attending Question Time will be aware — that there is a considerable amount of work to be done in the process of recruiting people and in training labour inspectors. That was a feature in deploying the 31 inspectors currently in place. The figure of 90 was arrived at in view of the recent history in this area where there were clearly a number of challenges particularly new to us, not least the one mentioned by Deputy Morgan as regards people from other countries who have come to work here. While a preponderance of these people come from three countries, at this stage the Irish economy sustains workers from a great variety of backgrounds and locations with different languages. It certainly would be difficult to provide these skills across the entire labour inspectorate. Currently the practice is to deploy interpreters where necessary. That is being done quite successfully at this stage. Undoubtedly, this is a question that will be looked at in the context of the recruitment of the additional officers. It is intended that the new office will have considerably wider resources available to it in legal and accountancy terms as compared to the situation previously.

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