To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what data his Department by his Department and its predecessor holds on the level of diversity in the recruitment of employees in each of the last three years. (290514)

The Department invites each candidate in individual recruitment exercises to complete a diversity monitoring questionnaire. The information from questionnaires is collated and monitored in order to assess the effectiveness of our advertising and recruitment processes and the workforce profile.

In line with the requirements in the public sector Employment Duties, the Department publishes annual reports covering our equality and diversity reporting responsibilities, including diversity data on applicants for employment. The annual reports for 2008 and 2009 are not yet available following machinery of Government changes and extracting the specified data alone at this stage would incur disproportionate cost.