Written answers

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Departmental Agencies Staff Recruitment

Photo of Niall CollinsNiall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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259. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of new posts that will be created at the IDA in 2017 following the recent budget announcement to strengthen agency staff to respond to Brexit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36791/16]

Photo of Niall CollinsNiall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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260. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the total number of new posts to be created in each State agency under her Department in 2017 following the recent budget announcement to strengthen agency staff to respond to Brexit, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36792/16]

Photo of Mary Mitchell O'ConnorMary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 259 and 260 together.

Given the wide mission my Department has, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union will impact significantly on all policy fields across the Department as well as our family of Agencies. In our immediate response, the EU Affairs Unit of my Department exercised a dedicated overall coordination role across all of the relevant policy areas of the Department, and represented the Department in the work that is being undertaken at cross-Government level. However, in light of the volume of work to date, my Department has since decided to augment these existing arrangements with the establishment of a specific Brexit Unit. This Unit is headed up at Principal Officer level and will lead on the coordination of my Department's policy responses to Brexit including our approach to the negotiations within the EU and bilateral relations with the UK.

Moreover, immediately following the UK referendum result, I established a Coordination Group within my Department consisting of relevant enterprise, single market, and trade officials, together with the Chief Executive Officers of IDA and Enterprise Ireland to consider the short, medium and long-term issues arising for our stakeholders. I chair this Group, and I will continue to do so as part of my Department’s ongoing response to Brexit. In addition, my Department has also decided to establish a Senior Officials Group on Brexit, which will monitor developments across the Department on a regular basis at official level. Furthermore, the Management Board of my Department is also co-ordinating my Departments’ own response across all its Divisions to the referendum outcome.

In regard to new posts created in State Agencies, the additional €3million in Pay that I secured in Budget 2017 is targeted specifically to assist in our response to the evolving Brexit scenario. It will enable the Department and its Agencies to recruit an additional forty to fifty staff to supplement existing staffing numbers. In this regard, it is proposed to distribute the additional €3 million pay allocation across Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland and the Health and Safety Authority, as well as to support the dedicated Brexit Unit within my Department. However, as the 2017 Revised Estimates Volume – or REV - is still being finalised it is not yet possible to be specific on the distribution of the additional posts across each Agency at this time, albeit that the 2017 REV will be published in early December by my colleague the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

In the context of the additional resources being applied, it is also important to recognise that each Agency will be provided with an overall Pay ceiling within which they will have some flexibility to align their staffing resources to manage their overall operations and priorities, including Brexit-specific actions. In addition some Agencies also have Own Resource Income which they may wish to utilise to support some Brexit-specific actions, be that to cover operational Pay costs or some Non-Pay costs, such as running promotional and awareness campaigns. The additional Agency staff will be specifically tasked with assisting companies adjusting to the evolving challenges faced from Brexit, help enterprise clients to diversify into new markets, secure new business and explore innovation opportunities.

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