About eMobility

Civil service mobility allows officers to apply for transfer if they are in the following general service grades:

• Clerical Officer (CO)
• Executive Officer (EO)
• Administrative Officer (AO)
• Higher Executive Officer (HEO)
• Assistant Principal Officer (AP)
• Principal Officer (PO)

Civil service mobility operates under the remit of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and is administered by the NSSO. You can find more information on this DPER website.

There are two types of civil service mobility. They are advert-based mobility and waitlist-based mobility.

Please note that civil service mobility currently does not include the following:

• Public service grades
• Head-to-head transfer arrangements
• Mobility within the same department and the same zone
• Secondment arrangements
• Non-permanent officers
• General civil service grades other than CO, EO, HEO and AO
• Technical and professional grades

Roles

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER)

DPER are the policy owners of civil service mobility.

NSSO

NSSO are the administrators of Civil Service Mobility.

Local HR

Local HRs will be the lead administrators of the scheme in circumstances where an offer is under consideration, or one has been made.

They will promote awareness of mobility across their organisation and comply with the conditions of the scheme. They will have the main roles in the transition of all mobility moves to and from their organisation.

If you apply for mobility through the scheme, you can only receive an offer if you fulfill all these criteria:

• If you have been in your current organisation for the preceding two years
• If you have been in your current grade for the preceding two years
• If you have been in your current location for the preceding two years
• If you have a satisfactory performance recorded for the previous working year
• If you are not deemed unsuitable for mobility at this time

An applicant must be eligible under all criteria before they are deemed to hold an overall status of ‘Eligible’ on the mobility system. If any criterion is not met and the application has the status of ‘Ineligible’, the applicant cannot proceed to pre-offer stage, or be made an offer of mobility.

If you are within the included grades for waitlist-based mobility, you may apply before you are eligible, and move up the waitlists as usual. While you are ineligible, any applications will not go to the pre-offer stage, and you will not receive an offer of mobility.

The mobility system is updated automatically, so you may become eligible for consideration later.

You can check your eligibility at any time through the mobility homepage link on your HR Self-Service . If you don’t have access to HR Self-Service but are a customer of the NSSO, you can contact the central mobility team to request your status.

All direct communications about both advert-based and waitlist mobility will be by email only to those who have registered for it. These will be sent to the work and home email addresses listed on your HR portal record. It is your responsibility to provide valid, up-to-date home email addresses. You can update your home email address online, through the self-service system. The NSSO is not responsible for non-delivery of messages where contact information is not up to date or not recorded.

To confirm you are eligible for mobility, your local HR unit must complete a suitability report, and update this on the NSSO website. A formal offer of mobility can only be made to you if you are deemed suitable for mobility at that time.

An active determination will only be recorded on the NSSO website where your local HR unit has already completed the assessment. Otherwise, your suitability may by reflected as ‘No Determination Made’. You can receive a mobility Pre-Offer at ‘No Determination Made’, but the suitability process must happen before this can proceed to formal offer.

You may be deemed unsuitable for mobility under any of the following reasons:

Underperformance: if you are currently subject to a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) under circular 24/2016.

Discipline: if you are subject to a live disciplinary warning or sanction.

Investigations: if you are currently subject to any formal investigations, the investigation process must complete first.

Attendance: due to an assessment of your attendance record.

You must be deemed suitable under all criteria to receive a formal offer of mobility.

Your organisation’s local HR unit have primary responsibility to complete the assessment, but in some cases the assessment may involve input from the HR unit of the organisation considering you for mobility.

Any determination that an officer is unsuitable for mobility will include a date for review of that decision. After that time has passed without update, the determination will expire and revert to ‘No Determination Made’.

The advertisement-based mobility scheme is currently available for generalist Principal Officer (PO), Assistant Principal (AP), Administrative Officer (AO) and Higher Executive Officer (HEO) grades on the HR Services (HRS) self-service system.

Advertisements for positions in these grades are posted directly to the HR Services self-service system by recruiting HR units in the civil service.

All active advertisements can be viewed through HR Services self-service, and officers can register to receive notifications when a new posting is made in their grade.

Registering Interest for Notifications

To register interest to receive notifications:

• Log into HRMS self-service
• Select ‘advertisement-based mobility’.
• Select ‘mobility position alert’.
• Tick the Opt-In box and select ‘confirm’.
• Select ‘save’ on the following page.

Officers who are a HR services customer but do not have access to self-service can contact the central mobility team at mobility@nsso.gov.ie to have interest registered on their behalf.

Active Advertisement Postings

To view active advertisements:

• Log into HRMS self-service.
• Select ‘advertisement-based mobility’.
• Select ‘open mobility positions’ to open the mobility advert listings.

Clicking ‘view advert’ will provide more details on the position, including how to apply.

Notifications from the Scheme

All communication in regards to the mobility scheme will be issued by email only.

It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that a valid home and business email address is recorded on their Personal Information page on the HR Management System Self-Service.

The applicant is fully responsible for monitoring their emails, including while on any form of leave.

Allowances cannot be made for opportunities lost due to notifications being missed by the applicant.

Professional and Technical Roles

Officers who are currently working in equivalent professional/technical grades are not currently eligible to apply for mobility.

If a staff member is unsure if their current role is a Professional/Technical grade, confirmation can be obtained from their local HR unit.

Mobility for Professional/Technical grades will be considered at a future date.

Application Rules and Guidelines

• All mobility moves are permanent, with no right to return to former organisation/role
• Officers should determine if a position suits their needs before making an application.
• There is no automatic right to elective work arrangements e.g. worksharing, shorter working year and so on.
• It is in your best interest to declare any reasonable accommodation requirements to your Local HR in advance of a move to a new organisation.
• Pay rates/allowances for performance of particular duties will not carry unless the new role includes the same conditions.

Waitlist mobility offers an opportunity for the general civil service grades of Clerical Officer (CO), Executive Officer (EO), Higher Executive Officer (HEO) and Administrative Officer (AO) to apply for mobility (i.e. transfer) through an open, fair, and transparent system available on the NSSO website.

This system replaces the old transfer mechanisms of Central Application Facility (CAF), Central Transfer Lists, and Head-to-Head transfers.

Civil service organisations may continue to operate an internal transfer list for lateral movement requests within a single zone only. In these cases, that list will take precedence for movement within a zone.

You can apply for waitlist-based mobility through the NSSO website if you hold a permanent general service grade at CO, EO, AO, or HEO. To apply, log in, click on the link ‘mobility homepage’, and select ‘add mobility request’. This will bring applicants through the following application sections:

• Confirm permanent status
• Agree to job descriptions
• Accept the terms and conditions of the scheme
• Option to record your level of proficiency in the Irish language
• Zone and organisation selection

Applicants without access to the NSSO website (for example: remote workers), staff members on sick leave, or a leave of absence (career break, shorter working year, domestic leave and so on) can apply by completing an application form and submitting it to mobility@nsso.gov.ie. The application form is available here.

Waitlist-based mobility is based on locations (cities and townlands) being grouped into zones. A list of mobility zones can be found here, while information about the specific offices included in civil service mobility can be found on the interactive mobility map. Both of these are owned and maintained by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Officers can apply for a maximum of 2 zones from a list of 46 zones. A maximum of 5 organisations can be selected from each zone.

Communications to waitlist-mobility applicants will be issued by email only, including offers of mobility.

Individual waitlists are a combination of the relevant grade, zone, and organisation.

Applications go into a queue on each waitlist based on the date an application was made.

If two or more application dates are the same, queuing is calculated by length of reckonable service in the grade. This is calculated on a daily basis, factoring in any breaks in service.

Officers may place their open applications on hold through the NSSO website.

Placing an application on hold means that the corresponding application will not receive an offer of mobility. An application that has been placed on hold will remain on the waitlist and will retain its position or move up the waitlist as if it were an active application.

There is no limit to the amount of time an officer may place their own application on hold. Placing one application on hold will not affect any other mobility applications.

Local HR units have access to all of the mobility waitlists for their organisation, and can use them to choose an applicant to fill a vacant position. They must select the top eligible applicant whose application is not on hold.

They may choose another eligible applicant in cases where the position is to be filled by an applicant who has indicated a competency in the Irish language. In this case, they will filter the wait list by the competency level required and select the top eligible applicant from the filtered list.

Only the highest eligible applicant can be progressed from a core waitlist or its filter.

If you have been selected for consideration from a mobility waitlist, you will get an email to inform you.

At pre-offer stage, you will have three working days to cancel the individual application if you choose. If you want to proceed with the offer, you should complete the Reasonable Accommodation Assessment form at this time.

When you are deemed fully eligible and agreement is reached between both HR units, the HR unit of the organisation you are applying to join will make a formal offer to you. This offer will be emailed to your work and home email addresses. You will have five working days to accept or decline the offer.

If you decline the formal offer, or do not choose within the five days, all of your applications in the relevant zone will be removed automatically.

A formal offer of mobility is subject to you being deemed suitable to receive an offer of mobility at that time, as determined by the relevant HR unit(s). The deciding HR unit will communicate to you in writing if you are found to be ineligible on the basis of your suitability assessment.

Otherwise, you may be considered unsuitable for the specific position following investigation or assessment where:

• You have a disability for which reasonable accommodation cannot be made in the location or role you have applied for.
• Your Irish language skills are found not to be sufficient for the role under consideration.

In any of these cases, your placing on waitlists will not be affected and you may be considered for the next available vacancy.

To accept or decline an offer, you need to log in to the NSSO website. If you are an NSSO customer but do not have access to the portal, you must email the central mobility team to make this change.

Important: officers who are deemed to have access to the NSSO website will not be facilitated by the NSSO.

It is your responsibility to actively manage your applications. We highly recommend that you should only apply to areas of definite interest. If you decline an unwanted offer, all applications within the same zone will be cancelled.

You can find more information about the scheme on this the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform website.

If you have any questions about the mobility scheme, please search this website or raise a case here. You can also email mobility@nsso.gov.ie or call 0818 107 100 from 09:00-13:00 Monday to Friday.