Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Question 136: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, in regard to his announcement of the recruitment of an additional 11 labour inspectors, the number who have been appointed to date in 2006; when he expects the full number to be appointed; if these people will be concentrated on any particular area of work; the ratio between the number of labour inspectors and the numbers in the workforce; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4078/06]

Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Following the announcement by the Minister, Deputy Martin, on 12 April last, there are now 31 inspector posts sanctioned for the labour inspectorate. This represents almost a doubling of inspector personnel in the past 18 months and is indicative of a determination to ensure compliance with employment rights legislation. While the additional officers have been appointed and have been serving since late last year a vacancy has arisen in the past week. An application for a career break from one of the longer-serving inspectors was approved and became effective on 26 January. I expect that the vacancy will be filled next week.

The officers will concentrate on those employment sectors that have traditionally required considerable attention from the inspectorate. These are the services sectors covered by employment regulation orders such as, hospitality, cleaning and agricultural work. It is notable that many migrant workers are employed in these sectors at present.

The latest CSO statistics indicate that currently the number of people in employment is now more than 2 million. Accordingly, it might be characterised that for every inspector there are about 65,000 persons in employment. However, such an analysis is highly misleading since significant groups of people, substantial in number within that global figure, are securely in receipt of pay and conditions that exceed the statutory minimums provided for in employment rights legislation.

It has to be noted also, that in addition to the remit of the labour inspectorate, there is a wide corpus of employment rights legislation administered by various other State organisations and services. These include, for example, the Employment Appeals Tribunal, the Labour Court, the Rights Commissioner Service and the Health and Safety Authority.

Immediately within the Department there is also, for example, the redundancy and insolvency sections together with the employment rights compliance section, ERCS. The latter comprises three distinct but inter-related business units, that is, the labour inspectorate, the employment rights information unit and a further separate unit that administers the referral of cases for prosecution and legal enforcement of orders. A complement of staff, who number in excess of 150 people, administer the various functions that are the remits of these bodies and services.