Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 July 2004
161 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the major factors which led to the particular decentralised location chosen, and the criteria used for selection in respect of each decentralisation move in his Department outlined in the Budget 2004 statement. [21059/04]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware from the Budget Statement of the Minister for Finance in December 2003, the following factors were used in selecting locations for decentralised offices: the need to achieve a fit 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 and the general infrastructural capacity in the selected areas.
The headquarters of my Department will transfer from Dublin to Mullingar, reflecting the Athlone-Mullingar-Tullamore gateway in the national spatial strategy and the fact that my Department already has substantial staff in Athlone and Tullamore. In addition, approximately 100 posts will also be transferred to Athlone from Dublin. Similar considerations influenced the choice of Athlone, Edenderry and Portarlington as the new locations for a number of bodies under the aegis of my Department.
