Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 May 2004
204 Mr. Cuffe asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if the availability of crèche and child care facilities was taken into consideration in determining decentralisation locations. [14676/04]
View answerThe Minister for Finance announced the decentralisation programme in Budget 2004. He stated that the following factors were taken into account when selecting locations: the need to fit in with the national spatial strategy in terms of gateways, hubs and their respective catchments; the location of existing decentralised offices; the desirability of clustering a Department's decentralised units within a region; the importance of respecting the scale and character of locations in terms of their capacity to absorb the number of new jobs involved; and the existence of good transport links by road, rail or air and the general infrastructural capacity in the areas selected.
The availability of crèche and child care facilities was not a factor. However, the Government accepted the recommendations of the report by the decentralisation implementation group. It recommended, inter alia, that an interdepartmental committee be established to examine the issue and submit a report to the group by the end of May.
