Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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542. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of additional staff to be taken on in her Department and in all individual State agencies and bodies under her aegis in 2017; the cost of hiring additional staff in her Department and in each individual State agency and body in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40857/16]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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It is not possible at this time to be specific on the distribution of the additional posts across my Department and each State Agency in 2017 as the 2017 Revised Estimates Volume – or REV - is still being finalised, albeit that the 2017 REV will be published shortly by my colleague the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

It is also important to note 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. In addition some Agencies also have Own Resource Income which they may wish to utilise to support their particular priority areas, be that to cover operational Pay costs or some Non-Pay costs, such as running promotional and awareness campaigns.

Staffing resources are an ongoing priority to ensure my Department’s continued ability to facilitate the wide mission and volume of work in a range of challenging policy areas. This will continue during 2017 with ongoing day-to-day review of the appropriate staffing across my Department in response to known and probable priority areas.

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, to be led at Principal Officer level with a team of three staff assigned, to be reviewed in line with the necessary workload as matters develop.