The Civil Service faces an acute staffing crisis. New figures reveal there are 1,794 vacancies in the 15 Government Departments.
Low wages at entry level and more lucrative pay in the private sector are blamed for the vacancies. They are across all grades and professions.
Most worrying is that many vacancies are at the middle and higher levels of the Civil Service. For example, there are vacancies for six assistant secretaries, 10 principal officers, 88 assistant principal officers and 197 higher executive officers.
At the lower level, there are 420 vacancies - almost a quarter of the total - for clerical officers. They have starting pay of only £12,034 a year, rising to a maximum of £19,938.
The figures were released by each Minister this week to Labour TD Ms Mary Upton on foot of Dail questions.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has the most vacancies, with a total of 754 posts to be filled.
The Department of Agriculture and Food has 407 vacancies, the Department of Education has 103 vacancies, while the Departments of Health and Children and Public Enterprise have 81 posts to be filled.
In the cases of Justice and Agriculture, part of the reason for the high number of vacancies is that many new posts have been sanctioned in the last year. Many posts have been sanctioned in recent months to deal with the asylum issue.
Several of the Ministers told Ms Upton that they were experiencing the same labour market constraints as other sectors.
The Minister for Health said the Civil Service was having difficulties in "attracting and retaining staff in the current economic climate".
The Minister for Education said the filling of vacancies was "taking longer then anticipated".
Mr Sean O'Riordan, of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, told The Irish Times that the figures reflected what he had suspected for some time: that the Civil Service was no longer an attractive career for young people due to poor salaries.
"The central issue here is salary. Even at the top level you are in a situation where the wages would not compete with the equivalent posts in the private sector. No one in the Civil Service, no matter how high a position, gets a car or perks for example."
The general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, Mr Blair Horan, representing the lower-grade civil servants, said the booming economy was to blame for the high turnover of clerical officers from Departments.
"The pay rates are not seen as attractive options. Even with the recent public service increases, the salary levels are not high enough."
Union leaders say the large number of vacancies automatically puts extra pressure on existing staff.
A spokeswoman for the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission, which recruits all levels of public service staff, claimed last night that despite the figures released this week by each Minister, the commission was currently actively trying only to fill 860 jobs across all grades.
She said the discrepancy in figures might be due to internal Department promotions which had not yet been filled.