Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

We have established a programme office to manage the change process with the ETBs. We have a series of different types of engagement with them. I lead a meeting of senior officials of the Department with all 16 CEOs and the chief executive officer of the ETBI every three months or so. We have established a programme board with nominees from the Department, SOLAS, and the ETB sector to manage the programme of change and we have a steering committee of senior officials in the Department to manage the programme of change.

The programme of change is wide-ranging and includes the establishment of shared services. We are advancing with a shared service payroll at present. We are still scoping out the possibility of a shared service for financial services, which would be very important in terms of enhancing the financial services. We will probably make a call on the business case for that within the next two months or so. We have also been working through the staffing of the organisations. In most cases, there is an amalgamation of two units and sometimes three. There actually are three single standing vocational education committees, VECs, that became education and training boards, ETBs, but, in addition, there is a transfer of training staff from the former FÁS, so there is a lot of change going on in this regard. Clearly, there are efficiencies the ETBs can have through being a single organisation rather than a number of former organisations and it is a matter for the chief executive officer to manage this. We have prioritised the filling of critical vacancies and have allowed for acting up education officers to be put in place. We are now looking at putting in place a principal officer cadre within them and at having an approach to that. We are in discussions with the sector about that at present.