Department spending millions on outside staff
Thursday June 11 2009
THE Department of Agriculture is paying millions of euro to external inspectors to perform food safety checks because industrial relations issues have prevented them using their own fully trained staff to do this work.
The department has trained 270 staff to internationally recognised standards to carry out post-mortem checks on animals in slaughterhouses.
However, it is still paying wages to hundreds of temporary veterinary inspectors to do this work because it hasn't got agreement on deploying its own officials.
This is still happening even though the departmental staff in question were trained to carry out this work up to 10 years ago, Fine Gael's Michael Creed told the Dail Agriculture Committee yesterday.
Payments to temporary veterinary inspectors drawn from private practice are believed to account for a large chunk of the department's €40m annual meat inspection bill.
Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith said that the temporary veterinary inspector programme had been chosen for a value for money review, and he was "more than conscious of the need to move on this".
However, in relation to using department staff to carry out these post-mortem checks on animals, there were "industrial relations issues" involved within the department which had delayed it, he said.
The department spent almost €40m on its meat inspection service at slaughterhouses and processing plants last year.
Earn
The temporary inspectors were drawn from private practice on a rota basis and are understood to earn around €300 per four-hour shift at a meat factory.
FG Agriculture spokesman Michael Creed said that the department had decided 10 years ago its own officers should be trained to carry out this work.
But it was still not being done, even though we were now in an era where not getting value for money could not be tolerated, he added.
"Very significant savings could be made by using trained staff instead of temporary veterinary officers for post-mortem inspections," he told the committee.
Mr Creed said the staff had been trained to FETAC level five standard fully, which equipped them to do the work concerned, and it showed a real lack of urgency that 10 years later they were still not doing it.
Mr Smith said it was necessary under EU law to have a vet present when inspections were carried out, although the vet did not have to actually carry out every inspection.
Teagasc provided the training in line with prescribed European standards for auxiliary staff in this area.
The Public Accounts Committee heard recently that the department employs some 800 temporary veterinary inspectors to carry out food safety inspections.
Presenting his revised budget estimates yesterday, Mr Smith said that his department would spend €3.4bn this year, which was a "massive level of support", despite the downturn.
He estimated that administrative costs in the department would come to €301.5m in 2009, or 9pc of estimated expenditure.
- Aideen Sheehan
