Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can go through that. The Health and Safety Authority, HSA, now has 317 sanctioned posts. That is an increase from 190 in December 2020. There are currently 280 staff in situ. The overall vacancy rate is impacted by retirements and resignations, in addition to those recruitment challenges the Chair mentioned. The HSA anticipates an additional 27 new starters next year, which will bring staffing levels to 317 at the end of next year. Inspector vacancies are being prioritised. The anticipated 27 new starters will be primarily inspector grades in specialist roles. The majority of the HSA inspectors are at grade 3 level. The cost of employing ten additional inspectors at grade 3, including employer PRSI, recruitment and onboarding costs, is approximately €568,000 for the next year.

The Workplace Relations Commission has a sanctioned staff complement of 225 civil servants, who are staff of my Department. The WRC inspectorate currently has sanction for 80 inspectors, including ten inspectors who were added as part of this budget. It currently has 55 inspectors in situ. A national recruitment competition has just recently closed. It is expected that the 15 current inspector vacancies and the ten new inspector posts will be filled on foot of those competitions. We have very good panels. We got 230 applications. We are happy with how that recruitment has gone. We have two different panels and we expect to hit those figures by the end of this year, with 15 new hires and ten more at the start of next year.

The CCPC's sanctioned headcount is 263. At the beginning of October, the serving sanctioned number of staff was 218. The CCPC plans to fill all current vacant posts this year. There are currently 45. The CCPC has informed my officials that it is making significant progress in recruitment efforts. Twenty-six of these vacancies are already in the recruitment process and we expect to have new hires shortly.