Ms Ita Mangan:

The vast bulk of the questions that Deputy Brady has asked were addressed at the last meeting. We outlined all the background papers in detail and gave copies to the committee. This included all of the background details of how the decision was reached. We covered all the issues about regional managers. We covered more or less every question that has been asked by Deputy Brady here this morning. As I already said, I am not going to talk about the board meeting, because it is contrary to the code of conduct on state boards to talk about board meetings outside of the board meeting, and I do not intend to break that code. I have already explained that to Deputy O'Dea.

Addressing deputy Carey's issue on volunteers, I have no evidence that volunteers are walking away. There are two sets of volunteers involved in delivering our services. One of these groups consists of the volunteers who are members of boards. In the case of MABS, the service is entirely professional. The boards are voluntary, but the actual deliverers of the service are all employees. Some of those boards, I think about 4 out of 51, actually do the management themselves, in the sense of paying the staff and so on. In all the other cases, it is the staff who do the administration. One of the things that will improve when we undertake this re-organisation is that there will be centralised administration, so that the staff will be able to advise people on their money problems, rather than spending their time on administration.

The other group of volunteers that people are concerned about are those who volunteer to provide information in Citizens Information Board services. There are no similar people in the MABS services. In fact, tomorrow Ms Black and I, with the Minister present, will be presenting awards to volunteers of long standing, because we value their input. We have seen no evidence that any of the volunteers in that category are in any way concerned about the re-organisation because in general, they liaise with the staff of the Citizens Information Services and provide the services when required. The change in governance will not make any difference to them. They will simply be responding to a different voluntary board, because the new boards will all be voluntary as well. All we are doing, in effect, is reducing the number of boards from more than 90 to 16. The participants in those boards will all be volunteers. There will not be an affect on services, or and issue around volunteers at the Citizens Information Board losing out. As I have said, the volunteer staffing of MABS is entirely on the board side.

Deputy Carey was critical of our attitude.

I am absolutely sure that I cannot see the point of having a detailed discussion on what is a very technical document given that at the previous hearing, we provided all of the information and then commissioned this document because the committee requested it. As I said already, and I keep repeating, we were not doing this for financial reasons. We were doing it for other reasons, mainly governance and improved services. As the committee will see, the cost-benefit analysis actually provides that there will be a financial improvement for the Citizens Information Board when this reorganisation is implemented but there is a six to one benefits-cost conclusion in this report. We could discuss forever the details of whether the savings would accrue in year one or year eight but in all honesty, I do not really see the point of it.

Regarding Deputy Carey's point about the rent, we pay rent at commercial rates virtually everywhere. There are a few places where we have access to offices that are other public sector offices. We will still have exactly the same arrangement. There will be no change in any of that.