Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 87: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will provide a professional breakdown of the 3,000 civil and public servants to be recruited this year as announced in December 2011. [3797/12]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Government is committed to reducing the Public Service number to 282,500 by 2015. Given the importance of meeting this challenging numbers target, any recruitment will be directed towards areas of most need. In order to mitigate the impact on frontline service provision as far as possible, with the co-operation and flexibility of individual public servants, we will fully use the mechanisms set out in Public Service Reform Plan, including the filling of essential posts and the utilisation of redeployment. Public Service Organisations must fully use all options for discharging work through reorganisation and redeployment of staff. Only after this will the issue of recruitment for current or emerging business needs arise.

Should a Department identify a potential exception to the moratorium on recruitment the sanction of my Department must then be sought. Exceptions to the Moratorium may be granted on the following basis:

a) statutory posts which have to be filled for legal reasons;

b) where failure to fill posts would result in a breach of EU/international regulations and impact upon exports etc.;

c) safety related posts - failure to fill them could leave the state open to potential legal liabilities or for security reasons;

d) specialist/technical posts to ensure continuity of operations e.g. legal officers; laboratory staff, maritime safety, etc.;

e) to ensure continuity of frontline services. In addition, in the case of the Education and Health Sector, a number of grades are exempted from the Moratorium in order to ensure that these vital services are maintained.

Each Sector in the Public Service has been establishing its own Strategic Workforce Planning Group to ensure that sectoral employers are developing plans to deal with the operational and strategic consequences arising from staffing reductions. The sectoral groups are feeding into a central Strategic Workforce Planning Forum under my Department. Factors such as emerging demographic gaps in management grades will also be considered; measures such as the recently advertised graduate recruitment competition will address such gaps.