Written answers

Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

Public Sector Staff Redeployment

Photo of Marcella Corcoran KennedyMarcella Corcoran Kennedy (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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200. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if an employee from a State agency can apply for promotion or transfer to another State agency outside of their current position in another area or county; if a transfer list exists in each agency. [35573/14]

Photo of Brendan HowlinBrendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Public Service Agreements covering the period 2010-16 (the Croke Park and Haddington Road Agreements) provide for agreed redeployment arrangements to apply in the Civil Service and in other parts of the Public Service.  Under these Agreements, redeployment generally takes precedence over all other methods of filling a vacancy. It facilitates the movement of staff both within and across sectors as a result of the rationalisation, reconfiguration or restructuring of public service bodies or where activities have assumed lesser priority arising from changing business needs and where such reorganisations have given rise to a surplus. A "Redeployment Toolkit" setting out the background and the detailed processes involved has been agreed with the staff unions and is available at . 

The agreed arrangements for the redeployment of staff within the Health, Education, and Local Government sectors are managed directly by those sectors.

Redeployment for the Civil Service and Non Commercial Semi-State Bodies operates through a system of Resource Panels, operated by the Public Appointments Service, which also arranges for cross-sectoral assignments to be made, where necessary.  This is  facilitated by the recently enacted , which removes the legislative barriers to mobility and redeployment across the various sectors in the Public Service and addresses other issues that arise on changing employer. 

Individual Departments with regionalised structures have agreed arrangements in place for the transfer of staff. There are no centralised arrangements in place within the Civil Service to facilitate requests for transfers to other locations or Civil Service employments, except in the case of grades represented by the Civil & Public Services Union. Transfers for these grades (mostly Clerical and Staff Officers) are arranged in accordance with formal procedures agreed with the Staff Side at General Council under the Conciliation and Arbitration Scheme for the Civil Service.

From time to time, transfers between other grades in the Civil Service are arranged on an informal, head-to-head, basis. Such transfers are arranged between the officers seeking to move and the relevant Personnel Units and require the agreement of both Personnel Officers.

The transfer of staff within the Health, Education, and Local Government sectors is a matter for the Minister with responsibility for the sector involved. 

There are no centralised arrangements allowing for the transfer of staff from one public service agency to another other than those arising under redeployment arrangements described above.

In general, the arrangements applying to promotion opportunities in the public service mean that such opportunities are normally confined to those already serving within a particular organisation and are not usually available on a cross-sectoral basis.

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