Why ?

It would seem due to "industrial relations issues" even though dept staff have been trained to do a job (10 years ago), the dpt has to pay 300 external staff to do the job for them

Department spending millions on outside staff - National News, Frontpage - Independent.ie

THE Department of Agriculture is paying millions of euro to external inspectors to perform food safety checks because industrial relations issues have prevented them using their own fully trained staff to do this work.
The department has trained 270 staff to internationally recognised standards to carry out post-mortem checks on animals in slaughterhouses.
However, it is still paying wages to hundreds of temporary veterinary inspectors to do this work because it hasn't got agreement on deploying its own officials.
This is still happening even though the departmental staff in question were trained to carry out this work up to 10 years ago, Fine Gael's Michael Creed told the Dail Agriculture Committee yesterday.

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Anyone for desert ?

because it hasn't got agreement on deploying its own officials.

Smells like Trade Unions to me.