Background to Redeployment – the Public Service Agreement 2010-14 (Croke Park Agreement)
The Public Service Agreement 2010-14 (Croke Park Agreement) provides for agreed redeployment arrangements to apply in the Civil Service and in other parts of the public service. Under the Croke Park Agreement, redeployment generally takes precedence over all other methods of filling a vacancy and supersedes any existing agreements on the deployment of staff. It sets out the agreed redeployment arrangements:
- within the Health, Education, and Local Authority sectors, which are managed within those sectors, and
- within and between the Civil Service and Non-Commercial State Sponsored Bodies (NCSSB) (including the panel arrangements);
- provides that cross sectoral redeployment will follow the arrangements agreed for the NCSSBs.
Redeployment allows staff to be moved from activities which are of lesser priority, or which have been rationalised, reconfigured, or restructured, to areas of greater need. In practical terms these arrangements represent a means of facilitating the targeted reduction in public service numbers in the period 2010 to 2014 while sustaining the ongoing delivery of services.
It is important to note that the redeployment process is not designed to facilitate staff mobility and will not be used for that purpose. Where staff are not available for redeployment in a particular location, the post, if approved to be filled, may be offered to staff who had already indicated an interest in transferring there, whether directly to the organisation concerned or through the Central Applications Facility (CAF). Since 2003, the CAF facilitated the wishes of substantial numbers of public servants to transfer to alternative locations under the Decentralisation Programme. However, the possibilities to facilitate requests for such transfers are now more limited due to the recent cancellation of the decentralisation programme, ongoing reductions in public service numbers and the necessity for redeployment to take precedence.
The progress made in implementing the provisions of the Croke Park Agreement, including examples of progress on redeploying public servants within and across sectors of the public service, is set out in the website of the Implementation Body at http://implementationbody.gov.ie/progress-and-delivery/.
The Croke Park Agreement provides for a system of Civil Service and NCSSB Resource Panels for staff to be redeployed. These panels contain details of the posts identified for redeployment on foot of business reorganisation or a need to meet lower ECF numbers across the public service. The overall panel is operated by the Public Appointments Service. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform circular (Circular 8 of 2010) setting out the arrangements in the Civil Service was issued in July 2010, following ratification of the Agreement.
Personnel Officers have also been issued with an information note on the redeployment process by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Here This provides guidance in relation to appropriate consultation with staff before entering data on the panels, and on procedures for the drawdown of staff from the panels. It notes that it is essential that employers with significant numbers of staff to redeploy should appoint a Redeployment Liaison Officer to actively manage the process. Organisations and public sector bodies are also required to record any brokered or managed redeployment arrangements through the Public Appointments Service Resource Panel system.
FAQs on Redeployment can be found here