Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not a pessimist by nature. I am an optimist who has a bit of experience. I have seen acting up used again and again. I appreciate what the Minister of State said about an instance whereby a person, unfortunately, has to leave suddenly. In this instance, we are saying in the case the person dies, but let us say he or she wins the lottery and goes to the Caribbean and does something nice. However, the person is gone and there is no notice. I urge the Minister of State to keep an eye on when retirements are coming up because acting up should not be used in that instance. That is pretty much flagged on the day one is born. One knows when that birthday is coming up and one will retire. I would not like to see acting up used in that instance. It would be detrimental. I welcome the clarification on the full authority. These are very important jobs. If one is acting up in the role, no matter how senior one is, and is not backfilled in the role in which one had been working, one will be pulled in two directions. One's focus should be on the job into which one is acting up because that is the more senior position. Notwithstanding that, I appreciate what the Minister of State has said about these people having to give months and months, but I urge him to keep a weather eye on this because, once there is a small amount of acting, it can creep in and become the way an organisation is run. We simply could not allow that happen for this organisation.

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