Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 180: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 559 of 29 June 2010 if she will to provide a breakdown of academic and non-academic staff employed, for each individual institution, in all of the seven universities, all Higher Education Authority designated colleges and all the institutes of technology during the periods December 2008, December 2009 and March 2010; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31887/10]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The information requested by the Deputy is provided in the following table.

As the figures show there has been a reduction in staffing across the institutions since the introduction of the Government's recruitment and promotion moratorium. The total number of whole time equivalent staff employed in the third level institutions in question has decreased from 20,545 at 31 December, 2008 to 19,469 at 31 March, 2010 — a reduction of 1,076 (5.2%) in whole-time equivalents.

The purpose of the recruitment and promotion moratorium is to facilitate a permanent, structural reduction in the numbers of staff serving and to contribute significant and ongoing savings to the Exchequer. In applying this moratorium generally, teaching and research activities in the education sector have been afforded significant exemptions relative to other areas of public expenditure. Nonetheless, the Deputy will appreciate that the sector has to contribute towards overall public sector numbers reductions.

In the area of higher education, the Government agreed that an employment control framework be developed to provide for the application of the moratorium arrangements to higher education institutions, subject to the continued oversight and review by the HEA and both my Department and the Department of Finance. The Government is anxious to continue to work with the publicly funded higher education institutions in achieving necessary reductions in public expenditure within the sector as an essential part of overall budgetary strategy. The employment control framework aims to enable this while providing a greater flexibility around recruitment in the filling of posts. The current framework, covering the period up to 31 December, 2010, requires the higher education institutions to achieve a minimum 6% reduction in the number of overall core staff by the end of 2010 as compared with the numbers in place at 31 December 2008. Arrangements to apply thereafter will be communicated in due course.

It is a matter for the individual higher education institutions to manage their staffing resources in the context of implementing the framework.