Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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34. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of unfilled positions within her Department and their titles; and the dates on which she expects to fill these positions. [18838/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department’s Employment Control Framework (ECF) figure, set by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER), for the total number of full time equivalent posts was set at 6,610 for 2012 is now set at 6,377 for 2013, which requires the Department to reduce the number of posts by 233 this year. The Department’s salary budget for 2013 has been reconfigured to take account of this reduced ECF. On that basis, only posts that are absolutely critical will be considered as to whether they can be filled. Therefore, at any given time, vacancies within my Department may change, with staff being reassigned or transferred to fill a critical post. It is not possible to provide a definitive number of unfilled positions, or to provide a timeframe as to when and if positions can be filled.

Staff redeployment is handled in such a manner as to ensure that the Department continues to meet its functions and serves its customer’s needs in an efficient and timely manner. The Department continues to meet its targets as efficiently as possible within available resources. In this regard, each week, nearly 1.5 million people receive a social welfare payment and, when qualified adults and children are included, almost 2.3 million people benefit from weekly payments. Some 600,000 families receive child benefit payments in respect of over 1.2 million children each month. In 2012 the activities of the Department included: 2 million applications processed; 87 million scheme payments made; more than 1 million control reviews; million telephone calls answered; 32,558 social welfare appeals finalised; 95,000 job opportunities advertised and; over 154,000 PPS numbers allocated to clients from more than 180 countries.