Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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247. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the number of vacancies there are currently at Administrative Officer grade; the number of appointments at this grade planned for 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [59164/22]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Delegated sanction is the policy in place across the majority of the public service for the management of public service staffing levels since 2015. It was introduced by the Government to provide Offices and Departments with flexibility to recruit staff at grades up to Principal Officer level in order to meet identified business needs subject to remaining within overall pay ceilings agreed as part of the budget process.

Under delegated sanction, Departments have the scope to manage their workforce, subject to compliance with legislation, circulars and other policies. As a consequence, information about the current number of AO vacancies, or indeed internal competitions run at the AO grade and subsequent internal assignments, is not available to my Department and would be a matter for individual Departments to reply on.

According to the most recent data available to my Department, based on the Civil Service HR database updated by Departments, there were 1,147 individuals serving in the Administrative Officer (AO) grade, with a further 2,008 individuals at AO equivalent grades, at the end of October 2022 in full time equivalent (FTE) terms. A total of 3,155 individuals were at AO or equivalent grade at end-October in FTE terms.

The Public Appointments Service (PAS) have provided the following information in relation to the competitions run by them for the AO grade:

- In October 2020 an AO competition was launched to recruit at that grade at the General, HR, Health Policy Analyst and Business and Finance Streams. From this competition a total of 240 AOs were assigned to different Departments

- In October 2021 a competition with the same criteria was run with 214 assignments resulting.

- A further competition for the Business and Finance stream was run in March of this year. To date 22 people have been assigned from that panel, with some candidates awaiting assignment

- In September of this year an AO General competition was run. First assignments will commence in the new year.

There is ongoing engagement between officials from my own Department and PAS and I understand that PAS plan to launch a new campaign in 2023 for the HR, Business & Finance, Energy, Environment & Climate and for the Health Policy Analyst streams at the AO grade. Assignments from these panels will commence towards the end of Q1 of 2023.