Communications regulator ComReg was operating with less than a quarter of the staff it needed to do some of its most important work, internal records have revealed.
ComReg made a series of pleas to the Department of Communications for extra staff so that it could tackle a workload that was constantly increasing.
Records released under freedom of information reveal chronic understaffing in some of ComReg’s most important functions, which were flagged to the Department of Communications three years ago.
In a briefing note for the department from 2015, ComReg said it had been “significantly impacted” in preparing what were supposed to be regular market analysis reports.
"The three year review timeframe … is not being achieved in Ireland, largely because of the inadequacy of resources allocated to market analysis activities," it said.
“These resourcing inadequacies arise largely as a consequence of the impact of the public sector recruitment moratorium, the Employment Control Framework, and the resulting inability of ComReg to recruit and retain suitably qualified staff.”
Five staff
It explained how they had just five staff working on “market analysis” and that this was way below what would be expected.
In other European Union states, the average number of people working in the area was between 16 and 24 full-time employees.
The number of full-time staff in the organisation went from 124 to just 105 at one stage with sanction to recruit new people “only being approved in exceptional circumstances”.
“ComReg’s ability to deliver on its requirements is severely restricted … despite significant increases to our workload,” the briefing note said.
An updated briefing from 2017 outlines the continued understaffing of the regulator. Critical market reviews were still not being completed on time “largely because of the inadequacy of resources allocated to market analysis activities”.
By that stage, the number of people employed in the market analysis area had increased to seven with the hope of recruiting a further two economists.
Overall staffing in ComReg had been increased and in 2015, they’d been given sanction for an extra 10 people to be employed.
However, some of the benefit of that had been lost because of “additional responsibilities arising in the intervening years”.
Appealing for assistance
In December 2017, ComReg's director of corporate services Joe Heavey wrote to the department, again appealing for assistance.
“In recent years, ComReg has not been able to maximise the benefits of effective regulation due to staff shortages,” he told them.
He said they were faced with “substantial additional responsibilities and functions”, and its mandate was becoming “increasingly complex”.
Mr Heavey said they would need 16 new staff in 2017/2018, another 17 in 2018/2019 and would have to use outsourcing to help cut the workload.
In a statement, ComReg said they had prioritised parts of its work programme to address its staffing shortfall.
“[We have] also taken measures to increase productivity and [have] redeployed staff in an effort to meet existing and new work commitments.
“ComReg is hopeful that it will get necessary sanction for more resources in order to carry out [our] important national functions.”
The Department of Communications said it was in discussions with ComReg and the Department of Public Expenditure about staffing needs.
