Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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112. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of additional biodiversity and heritage officers employed in each local authority by county since June 2020 to date in tabular form. [26684/21]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Under section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each Chief Executive is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he or she is responsible.

My Department oversees workforce planning for the local government sector, including the monitoring of local government sector employment levels. To this end, my Department gathers aggregate quarterly data on staff numbers in each local authority on a whole time equivalent basis.

However, granular data, in terms of the detailed breakdown of the local authorities which employ Biodiversity Officers and Heritage Officers is not collected and consequently is not available in my Department. The relevant information would be available from individual local authorities.

Since June 2020 my Department has approved staff sanction requests for a Heritage Officer for Carlow County Council and for Leitrim County Council.