John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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250. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the estimated full year cost of hiring an additional 60 full-time health and safety inspectors for the Health and Safety Authority; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10491/19]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Health and Safety Authority has 104 FTE staff in the inspector grades who work across all sectors in the economy.

In 2018, the HSA was allocated additional funding of €1.1m, including €400,000 for Brexit related posts and €300,000 for the operation of the Irish National Accreditation Board, which is part of the HSA. For 2019 it has been allocated additional funding of €508,000, including €412,000 to fund extra Brexit related posts. I am satisfied that the Health and Safety Authority is adequately resourced to deliver on its current mandate.

The estimated full year cost of hiring an additional 60 full-time inspectors (based on a mix of technical skills and grades) for the Health and Safety Authority would be in the region of €3,951,000.  It should be noted that, the hiring of this number of additional inspectors would lead to an additional requirement for operational supports in terms of ICT, HR, Legal and other administrative services.  It is estimated that 7 staff would also be needed to cover this operational resource requirement at a further cost of €292,000.