Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In reply to Deputy Boyd Barrett, the most effective way of getting that information is for the Deputy to table a parliamentary question to all my colleagues. I should not be encouraging that sort of thing but I will write to my colleagues as this information would be useful. Each line Minister would be able to answer that question.

In reply to Deputy Wallace's question about agency workers, the main focus of the new set of recommendations from the Labour Relations Commission is to minimise as far as possible the practice of buying in agency workers in order to get the best value from the cohort of people who are working full-time within the public service by not having to pay excessive premium pay, by extending working hours and so on. I hope this will mitigate the situation. The simple answer to the Deputy's question is that do not know, for example, how many agency nurses are retired HSE staff who are on pensions. I do not know the answer to that question.

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