Ms Ita Mangan:

We cannot have a situation in which we are implementing a decision of our board while every single aspect of that decision is being questioned by a parliamentary committee. We have the statutory responsibility to implement the decision. The executive is bound by the decision of the board and it is currently implementing that decision. While I absolutely accept that this Oireachtas joint committee has an oversight role, I simply do not accept that it has a role in every detailed aspect of the implementation of that decision.

I will move on to the other issues. Deputy O'Dea drew attention to the fact that the cost-benefit analysis report points out that there was a request from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Both this committee and the Minister can request that we do something but neither has the power to ensure that we do so. I happen to be a lawyer myself and my understanding is that the Minister does not have the power to intervene directly in the affairs of the Citizens Information Board, CIS, other than on very specific issues. It is the Oireachtas, however, that is the lawmaker. If Members of the Oireachtas decide, as lawmakers, to change the law then we as citizens and as members of boards will of course implement that law. It is the Members of the Oireachtas who make the law so if they wish to change the law on this matter, then by all means they can change it. It is not up to us to do so; it is up to them.

The Deputy is critical of a number of the terms in the report. I sympathise with this as I do not like some of the terms myself, but they are standard economic terms. This report was carried out by a professional economic organisation and uses standard economic terms that come from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform guidelines on how services are to be assessed. They simply are what they are: standard economic terms. I accept that they are not part of common language but when a professional economic body is asked to carry out this kind of exercise then it has to use the terms that are accepted in the economic sphere, be it lawyer-speak, doctor-speak or whatever else you might like to call it. What it is is economic-speak.

In response to the other issues raised, I want to say quite clearly that the people who are using the services of CIS and MABS will be in no way affected by this change, a point I made repeatedly the last time I was here. The only change taking place here is in governance and not in the delivery of services. I hope, in fact, that there will be a change in the delivery of services in the future, only because I hope to be able to improve that delivery. With regard to the no-change option mentioned by the Deputy, there was no agreement among the parties concerned as to what any other option might be. One can carry out economic analysis from here to eternity and we did in fact consider various options other than the one that we decided upon. I have never suggested that what we decided upon was the Holy Grail, but we have decided upon it and we are now going for it. We have carried out the economic analysis on that.

I agree that opposition to the reorganisation is coming from some of the boards rather than the staff of the organisation. These boards have not been in agreement on an alternative to what is currently in place. I am certainly not going to start getting involved in trade union negotiations but I make the point that what KPMG is doing at present is going through the legal processes around what is known as the transfer of undertakings - protection of employment, TUPE, legislation and that this requires that it gathers all of the information on individual employees. I also point out that as all of the personal information involved here is redacted, there is no question of a breach of data protection. It would be impossible to carry out a transfer of any undertaking, be it in the area of commerce or of government, without going through the proper channels for TUPE. TUPE is the legal mechanism by which undertakings are transferred and it is a process that has to be gone through to change the structures. Many big companies in Ireland have gone through this process without data protection ever having been raised as an issue. It is not an issue in this instance.