Ms Orla Barry:

I will come in on the issue of the volunteers. Everyone has spoken about the impact on volunteers of this potential restructuring. Following on from the MABS presentation, Citizens Information is unique in that we have three strands in our service, namely, paid core staff, community employment, CE, scheme workers who provide information, and volunteers. We have volunteer board members giving up their free time, energy and expertise. We also have volunteers who come into our service on a daily basis to give front-line information to service users. The minimum requirement for these volunteers is to give seven hours a week. The expectation is that these volunteers would be trained up in the extensive information that is available through the Citizens Information website and to provide professional information to a client.

On the impact of this restructuring on volunteers, it is my view that people volunteer for a local service. There is a buy-in. They may have had contact with MABS, the St. Vincent de Paul, the local Deputy or whatever, and they feel that they want to give something back to their local service. That is going to be lost if it is run on a regional basis. We spoke already about people voting with their feet and moving on. We cannot assess that impact at the moment as there is a huge vacuum of information, and that is the concern. We really do not know how our own jobs are going to be, how the volunteer boards are going to be or what is going to happen. We cannot give members definitive answers to those questions. However, people are currently volunteering in a local service because they feel they can give something back to their locality. There is a demand there. Members have heard figures about how much the service is used and respected in all sorts of places. I believe that will be lost. We do not know how to capture that. It is something we will need to address in the future.