Mr. Robert Watt:

We are co-located. The expression we use is that the two Departments are co-located in the Merrion Street-Merrion Row complex. Most of our people are located there. We have 50 to 60 people in Lansdowne House, Ballsbridge, but the majority of the staff are based in Merrion Street-Merrion Row, as are the majority of people in the Department of Finance. When the Department was split after the new Government took office and decided to change it, one of the decisions we made very quickly was that we would stay in the same building. That is very important to ensure co-ordination. The Department of Finance has control of one side of the budget and we have control of the other side, so our people talk all the time. We need to work together on the budget, particularly at this time of the year.

The costs of setting up the Department were negligible. When the new Government was formed we had to accommodate two Ministers as opposed to one Minister, so that involved reconfiguring some offices and putting in place an appropriate change in the accommodation for the Minister, Deputy Howlin. That did not cost much. We had to get new signage for the Department, but those things did not cost much. In terms of the overall numbers, we have 315 in the core Department and the Department of Finance has approximately the same number. Between us, there has been some increase in numbers since the old Department of Finance, but it is not significant. That reflects not necessarily the fact that we split but that the concerns reflected in the various reports about the capacity at the centre and the capacity of the Department meant we needed to increase resourcing. The Department of Finance expanded massively because of the banking issue and the people the NTMA brought in-----