Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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113. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of EO vacancies in the Sligo social welfare office at present; the panels in place to fill these vacancies; and when these vacancies will be filled. [14662/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department, like all Government departments and agencies, is required to operate within a staff ceiling figure and a commensurate administrative staffing budget, which for this Department has involved reductions in staff numbers.

Within these constraints, the Department is focusing on prioritising the filling of critical posts. The staffing needs for all areas within the Department, including the offices in Sligo, are continuously reviewed, taking account of workloads, management priorities and the competing demands arising, to ensure that the best use is made of all available resources with a view to providing an efficient service to those who rely on the schemes operated by the Department.

Given the ongoing need for the Department to respond to new and increasing demands in the wide range of services, vacancies which arise in one part of the Department may need to be filled in another area of the Department or in another location. Given this it is generally not possible to specify how many vacancies exist in a particular location at a particular time, although in the case of Sligo no requests to PAS for EOs are currently outstanding.

Executive Officer positions are filled from open, interdepartmental and internal panels in order of agreed sequences.