Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There are 216 out of 823 staff in my Department on fixed term contracts. Some 178 of these, almost all of them, are temporary clerical officers, TCOs, in PeoplePoint. PeoplePoint, the Civil Service human resources and pensions shared service centre, became operational in March 2013 and brings together shared HR and pension processes and systems to ensure a more consistent and efficient HR and pension service. More than 24,000 employees are availing of services provided by PeoplePoint across 20 Government Departments and offices. The use of contract staff for these posts was necessary to ensure business needs were met and as a temporary response to the demands of the new service. Plans are progressing to replace TCOs with permanent staff.

The Public Appointments Service, PAS, is running an open clerical officer competition and it is expected that panels will be in place by early November. Once panels are in place, it is intended to assign permanent clerical officers to PeoplePoint, ending the need for the current fixed term contract arrangements. All contract staff are managed within budget, the employment control framework numbers for each area and in accordance with the Department of Finance letter of 27 March 2009. In the bodies under the remit of my Department the total number of contract staff is 22.

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