Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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270. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the estimated cost of increasing local authority planning enforcement staff by increments of 25 additional staff, in tabular form. [40276/24]

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/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 numbers and grades of staff allocated to specific work areas within local authorities is not collected and consequently is not available in my Department. Planning enforcement staff could potentially be at a number of different grade levels depending on the specific local authority needs identified by the Chief Executive. For information, the salary scales applicable to administrative staff, professional planners and technical staff in the local government sector from 1 October 2024 are attached.

In terms of building capacity generally in the local government planning sector, my Department is currently working on a number of measures to increase staffing levels. The Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) submitted a report entitled Business Case for Resources for the Planning Function of Local Authorities in 2022 which identified a shortfall of 541 staff in local authority planning services at that time. Further to the submission of the report, my Department is working in conjunction with the LGMA on a programme of support to provide planning authorities, on a phased basis, with the requisite level of staffing resources and expertise to efficiently and effectively perform their planning functions. The estimated cost in a full year of the 541 full-time equivalents staff in local authority planning departments, as set out in the LGMA Business Case for Resources for the Planning Function of Local Authorities completed in Q2 2022, was projected at €40 million.

In this regard, my Department wrote to planning authorities in October 2023 conveying approval to the filling of an initial 100 posts, subsequently increased to 101 posts, in the local authority planning service under the first tranche of the programme. The estimated cost of the 101 positions in the first tranche, calculated at the mid-point of the respective pay scales of the grades concerned, was €7 million. Engagement is ongoing with the local government sector on the scope of further tranches.

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