Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 July 2004
81 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Defence 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. [21055/04]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, the Government decision on decentralisation announced by the Minister for Finance in the Budget 2004 statement provides for the transfer of my Department's Dublin based Civil Service staff to Newbridge and the transfer of Defence Forces headquarters staff to the Curragh. A wide range of factors were taken into account and balanced in selecting locations, including the need to achieve a fit with the National Spatial Strategy, in terms of the 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 and air, and the general infrastructural capacity in the areas selected.
