Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 July 2004
93 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food 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 2004 budget statement. [21056/04]
View answerIn his budget statement for 2004 the Minister for Finance listed the wide range of factors that were taken into account in selecting Departments and agencies for decentralisation and the locations for the new decentralised offices. These factors include, in selecting Departments and agencies for decentralisation: the imperative that customer service standards are not adversely affected by decentralisation; the core business and nature of the relevant Departments and agencies; the location of the customer base; and the need to ensure that the units involved are large enough to provide career opportunities for staff either within their own Department or in another Department within a reasonable distance; and, in selecting locations for decentralised offices: the need to achieve a fit with the national spatial strategy in terms of the gateways and 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; the existence of good transport links by road, rail or air and the general infrastructural capacity in the areas selected.
My Department is already heavily decentralised and has a significant number of staff in Portlaoise which will be the location of its headquarters.
94 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the number of the positions moved and the number of these filled on promotion in respect of the most recent decentralisation undertaken by his Department; and the number of follow-on moves which were triggered by the decentralisation. [21086/04]
View answerThe most recent decentralisation undertaken by my Department took place in 1998 to Johnstown Castle, Wexford. To obtain the requisite number of persons moving, 51 officers were relocated, 119 officers were transferred in from other Departments and 123 officers were directly recruited. No specific promotion competition was held in respect of this decentralisation.
