Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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1209. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the protocol for attendance by staff both civil servants and political non-civil servants to continuing professional development programmes and courses; the number of staff both civil servants and political non-civil servants in her Department who participated in such programmes on an annual basis in each of the years 2011 to 2016 and to date in 2017; the costs incurred by her Department for persons who participated in these courses; the providers of all such courses; the subject areas of all courses and programmes provided, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46059/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department is committed to the continued learning and development of its staff and has invested heavily in the rollout of tailored training to meet the needs of staff. The provision of this training is an investment by the Department in the continuing development of staff with the aim of ensuring that the Department continues to provide a high quality service to its customers.

Given the scale of my Department and the level of training activity it is involved in delivering across the country, it has not been possible to provide all of the information in the format requested by the Deputy. However I wish to inform the Deputy of the following;

In the period 2011 to 2017 my Department has spent the following sums in providing training and development:

Since 2015 the Department has prioritised the development of training to staff in its frontline roles, namely Appeals Officers, Case Officers, Deciding Officers, Designated Persons, Managers in Intreo Centres and Social Welfare Inspectors through the development of the Learning Programme known as One DEASP. This involved the development of a curriculum of over 70 instructor –led courses that are delivered by Departmental training staff. This training is further supported by the development of e-learning modules to support staff in these specific roles.

Since 2015 there have been over 9,500 attendees at various One DEASP training modules, which have been supplemented by approximately 8,300 e-learning completions:

To supplement this specific training and to cater for the broad range of training needs of staff across my Department additional generic training is delivered both internally and externally to meet the business needs of the Department. Since 2015 there have been a total of 23,000 attendees at such training across a wide range of different areas: