Public service-automatic right to incresed hours?

rjt

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Please bear with me! Am in a managerial role currently recruiting for autonomous public service body (education non-teaching post). A full time post is 32 hours pw.
At the moment my place of work has the following posts in order of seniority:
Post A: 26.5 Hours (reduced from 32 in 2008)
Post B: 16 Hours (reduced from 32 in 2011)
Post C: 12.5 Hours (reduced from 26 in 2010)
All workers were paid partial redundancy upon losing hours.
We have now 26 new hours, and really need a fourth person. So have followed public procedure and advertised publicly, for 1 -26 hour post as per Department of Education and Skills guidelines.
The Union representing B+C above are adamant that new hours should have been divided among existing staff based on seniority, or at least job should just have been advertised internally only, especially as they previously lost hours. I can't find precedence for this
DES have given different advice (Though none in writing!) basically saying that job must be advertised as over 26 weeks duration, no one in public service has automatic right and seniority only counts in this position in event of redundancy.
There is no reference to automatic rights of extra hours in contract.
Questions: Have I done the right thing in advertising? Does an employee have automatic rights to newly available hours based on historic redundancies/
Thanks is advance.
 
Personally I can't see how it could make sense to hire an additional staff member (and bear associated costs such as leave entitlements) where the work can be picked up by allocating additional hours to existing employees. Unless of course it's a case of needing more bodies to cover staffing levels?
 
3 people would not be able to fully cover requirements-really do need 4 to be in different rooms at same time
 
If the requirment is for 4 people then it is reasonable to advertise and take on another person. Unless the unions have a way of splitting their members in two? I suspect that they do not understand that the work requirement would be at the same time as their members currently work.
 
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