Written answers

Wednesday, 3 March 2021

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

Civil Service

Photo of Patrick CostelloPatrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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250. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will report on the commitment in action 45 of the National Migrant Integration Strategy to aim to have 1% of the Civil Service workforce from ethnic minorities; the arrangements his Department has put in place to identify the number of civil servants from ethnic minorities; the measures put in place to meet this target; the current proportion; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11992/21]

Photo of Michael McGrathMichael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The civil service is strongly committed to equality of opportunity for all in terms of its recruitment and employment practices. Our commitment is demonstrated and documented with key actions in the Civil Service People Strategy and the Our Public Service Renewal Strategy, both of which are to be renewed this year.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Public Appointments Services (PAS), which is an agency under the aegis of my Department, is the principal recruiter for the civil service. PAS plays a central role in attracting a diverse range of talented people to take up employment opportunities in the civil service.

PAS has a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee in place with both employer representatives and external experts in diversity and inclusion, working closely with officials in my Department. PAS will shortly launch an updated ED&I Strategy and has extensive engagements with NGOs from a diversity and inclusion perspective, including representatives from organisations including, for example, Mi-Wow, New Communities Partnership, AkiDwA, Business In The Community, the National Youth Council, the Immigrant Council of Ireland as well as groups representing members of the Traveller and Roma communities.Recently hired civil servants that identify as coming from an ethnic minority background have also presented to a number of career fairs and Institute of Guidance Counsellor conferences to share their experience of working in the civil service.

PAS has introduced a voluntary mechanism where applicants applying for civil service roles can opt, if they wish, to voluntarily complete an ED&I survey alongside their application that includes information on race and ethnic origin. Officials in my Department and PAS have recently analysed large volume open competitions undertaken in 2020 to identity, on an aggregate basis, diversity trends and some details are set out in the attached Table 1. It should be emphasised that this Table only reports on individuals who opted to voluntarily identify as being from an ethnic minority background and, as such, the statistics for candidates from an ethnic minority background may be under-representative.

Civil service employers do not currently request ethnic background information from civil servants, and any information voluntarily collected by PAS is not passed on to Civil Service Departments on assignment. As such, data for existing civil servants is not available centrally at present.

Employee demographic data is recognised as being critical to both baselining, evaluating and reporting progress in further embedding ED&I initiatives across the Civil Service. An action of an ED&I Working Group recently established in my Department is to explore how aggregate ED&I data might be captured to a common data standard by all Civil Service bodies, adopting best practice while being particularly mindful of data protection and other statutory obligations, noting that data related to racial or ethnic origin is deemed to be special category personal data under GDPR.

It is expected that equality, diversity and inclusion will continue to be a core component of new Civil Service Renewal and People Strategies that are currently being developed for implementation from this year, ensuring that we continue to build a diverse civil service that is reflective of the modern Ireland that we serve.

In the case of candidates that voluntarily identified to PAS

as being from an ethnic minority background
2020 Civil Service Competition
Total Applications for competition
Number of such candidates at application stage
% total applicants

for competition at application stage
Number of such candidates subsequently placed on panel
% of successful candidates subsequently placed on panel for assignment to a civil service employer
Temporary Clerical Officer
7,437
178
2.4%
70
2.4%
Clerical Officer
26,356
481
1.8%
14
1.8%
Executive Officer
14,602
344
2.4%
4
0.01%
Administrative Officer (Graduate Entry)
8,259
619
7.5%
4
4.4%
Assistant Principal
3,821
30
0.8%
1
1.1%
Principal Officer
1,754
16
0.9%
1
1.5%

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