Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade received a temporary reprieve from the impact of the Government’s employment control framework and was also allocated 50 temporary extra posts for 2012 and 2013 in order to enable it to plan and fulfil its EU Presidency responsibilities and activities in the first half of next year. Most of the temporary additional staff required by the Department for the Presidency are now in situ and have been assigned as appropriate. The additional staff are directly engaged in Presidency-related activities in most cases, although some have been assigned to positions vacated by experienced officers who have been redeployed to Presidency roles. Presidency responsibilities will also have varying impacts on the work of a number of the core staff of my Department at home and abroad.

At headquarters, eight staff have been redeployed to my Department from other Departments and offices, to which they are scheduled to return in summer 2013. Ten administrative and eight clerical staff have also been recruited on fixed-term contracts through the Public Appointments Service and eight interns have been recruited on the same basis directly by the Department.

Furthermore, a small number of staff have been temporarily seconded to the Department from other EU member states and from the Union's External Action Service, at no cost to the Exchequer. One retired officer has been temporarily re-engaged until July 2013.

In the context of missions abroad, the majority of Presidency-related posts have been assigned to the Permanent Representation of Ireland to the European Union in Brussels, with smaller numbers allocated to other missions including the permanent missions to the UN in New York and Geneva and those to the OSCE, the IAEA and a number of smaller international organisations in Vienna. The Presidency staffing plan for the permanent representation in Brussels was prepared following a carefully co-ordinated interdepartmental needs evaluation. Overall, the staffing of the permanent representation has been temporarily increased by 80 officers in various grades. The majority of these individuals have been assigned by other Departments and offices, at their own expense and from within their own staffing resources, with some 30 temporary administrative and clerical staff recruited locally.

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