State spends €1.5bn on temporary agency staff

The State has spent more than €1.5 billion in recent years on temporary agency staff, including chefs, architects, cleaners, staff in diplomatic missions, and nurses, new data shows.

In the Office of Public Works, more than €15 million has been spent since 2014 on 52 agency staff. These include IT contractors, engineers, architects, caterers, assistant chefs and household assistants.

In a letter to co-leader of the Social Democrats Catherine Murphy, Minister of State for the OPW Kevin Boxer Moran said “the roles OPW hired in from agencies are in the following sections: ICT, mechanical and electrical engineering, drainage maintenance, heritage services, civil and structural engineering, and Arás an Uachtaráin”.

In the Health Service Executive, more than €1.4 billion has been spent in the five-year period to 2018, documents from the health service reveal.

Election 2020: Leaders to meet again after ‘constructive’ meeting

---

Stormont talks breakthrough: Simon Coveney and Julian Smith present new deal

---

BT Young Scientist: What does it take to find a winner?

---

Niall Quinn rules out FAI chief executive role

---

In a letter to Ms Murphy, the HSE said agency expenditure “should be considered in the overall context including increasing demand for services; the impact of earlier constraints on recruitment in the public service and ongoing challenges in relation to the recruitment and retention of clinical staff”.

“Approximately 94 per cent of our pay-related spend each year is for directly employed staff and in certain cases, other than utilisation of agency, there are limited choices in terms of maintenance of essential services.”

The HSE said the flexibility offered by agency staffing makes it an “appropriate choice”.

“The HSE is committed to minimizing the use of agency staff but recruitment and retention of clinical, nursing and other key staff is a constant challenge and impacts adversely on our ability to maintain safe and effective services”, the letter said.

In 2014, €277 million was spent on agency staff, €259 million in 2015, €277 million in 2016, €301 million in 2017 and €330 million in 2018.

Figures for 2019 to date were not provided.

In the Department of the Taoiseach, a contract cleaning service is being used at a cost of almost €55,000 since 2017.

In a parliamentary response, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said this is being done “as a temporary measure to ensure that service levels in my department are maintained while a recruitment process for additional cleaning staff is undertaken”.

“In this regard, a total of three contract cleaners have been engaged by my department.”

Diplomatic missions

In the Department of Foreign Affairs, more than €2 million has been spent on hiring 114 agency staff. These are employed in a “small number” of diplomatic missions.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney said these include new missions with particular complexities in the local labour market or those where “changes in the workload necessitate time for an assessment of the number and type of roles or skills needed”.

“Open competitions for direct employment of locally engaged staff are generally held once there is clarity on operational requirements and the number and profile of the roles required.”

In the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, almost €130,000 has been spent on agency staff since 2015 in the areas of legal research and legal secretarial services.

Minister for Business Heather Humphreys said where there is a requirement for “particular critical skills that are not available at a point in time, or when a particular service is required for a short period of time, my department will use the services of an employment agency to acquire the required skills”.

“Staffing resources are an ongoing priority to ensure my department’s continued ability to facilitate the wide mission and volume of work in a range of challenging policy areas.”

In the Department of Defence, almost €3.4 million has been spent on temporary agency staff in the past five years, the Minister of State for Defence Paul Kehoe told Ms Murphy in a letter sent on December 23rd.

He said it was not possible to specify exactly how many agency staff were useddue to the way records of invoices are kept.