To ask the Minister for Infrastructure for his assessment of the impact of 163 vacancies in his Department's Water and Departmental Delivery Group.

Mr O'Dowd

As I said, my Department has been operating in a difficult financial environment for a number of years. Officials have advised that operating with the current level of vacancies has had an impact on the delivery of some operational flood risk management policy and IT functions. That also impacts on our ability to increase capital investment in new and existing flood risk management infrastructure and hinders our ability to improve our planning consultation response timelines. My officials are mindful, however, of the need to maintain, so far as is possible, service delivery. For example, during the flooding that occurred last year, my officials quickly moved staff from non-operational roles to support the effective overall multi-agency emergency response. In addition, working in partnership with Civil Service HR, and recognising that not all competitions can be brought forward at the same time, we have agreed a prioritised recruitment model, and plans are being progressed for the launch of about 10 professional and technical recruitment campaigns before the end of the calendar year. The prioritised competitions aim to recruit about 300 professional and technical employees across my Department and will be used to fill vacancies in the water and departmental delivery group.

Mr O'Dowd

Last October, when we faced flooding emergencies, we moved staff from various elements of my Department to the direct, front-line emergency response. Following the flooding that we witnessed last year, the Member may recall that Storm Ciarán bore down on us. Thankfully, that storm diverted, and we did not get the worst of it. We would have faced serious challenges at that time had Storm Ciarán hit us, because staff cannot work 24 hours every day, and many of my staff were out in all sorts of conditions dealing with the original flooding. Storm Ciarán would have presented us with huge problems. As I said in answer to the Member's original question, we are running a recruitment exercise and hope to recruit over 300 professional technical employees across my Department.

Mr Boylan

What else is the Minister doing to improve the capacity and capability of his teams?

Mr O'Dowd

As has been said many times in the Chamber by many different Ministers, the austerity of the past 14 years has left a deep scar across our public services. We have not been able to recruit and maintain staff at the level that we would otherwise have achieved. As I said in answer to the original question, I am running a recruitment exercise. I hope to bring more and more people into my Department and put them into front-line services not only to ensure that we have an effective and efficient public service response to flooding incidents but to put us into a position to plan for flooding events and to do the research to allow us to determine whether we need capital expenditure for hard, fixed flood defences or for other forms of flood defences.

Mr McCrossan

Will the Minister outline whether the staff shortages contribute to delays in the planning system, including the progress of housing developments across the region?

Mr O'Dowd

They are having an impact, and you can see that in the response times from DFI Rivers. I have made a separate submission to the transformation fund to recruit staff for a number of areas in my Department. They will assist in lowering the response times for planning applications in order to speed up the planning process.