Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not saying we do not need more labour inspectors; we may well do. I am just saying the figure of 90 is an historic one and not one that is committed to by the Government or one that is mentioned in any existing agreement with the trade unions. We anticipate that as we move out of Covid, we will be able to reduce the number of Covid-related inspections and increase the number of inspections related to employment rights. I thank the WRC for the work it does every day on upholding the rights of workers and for the work it has done very successfully in inspecting the return-to-work safety protocol.

In addition to what we are doing, we have also appointed 16 external adjudicators to the WRC panel to ensure there is a sufficient number of adjudicators in place to meet demand. There are competitions ongoing to fill vacancies.

We will need legislation quite soon, in the next couple of weeks, to respond to the Zalewski judgment, which requires that hearings can be held in public and that evidence must be given on oath.

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