Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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1256. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of portal and plant health inspectors his Department recruited in 2020 and to date in 2021, in tabular form. [16515/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has numerous staff members in a range of disciplines working on various aspects of Portal Inspections. The following table shows the number of staff that were assigned to Portal Locations in 2020 and 2021.

Additional staff may be involved in portal inspections, i.e. administration staff, but they are not necessarily based in a portal location.

My Department avails of workforce planning processes to achieve and maintain the correct level of human resources required in each portal location for inspection duties. Overall staffing levels within Divisions are continually monitored by HR.