Dr. Sinead Brennan:

The terms of the redundancy scheme are the same as the terms of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We offer three weeks' pay per year of service, plus two weeks' statutory pay, capped at €600. We opened a redundancy scheme in 2018. The organisation was going through significant change and we wanted to ensure we would have the right skill sets for the future. There were 33 participants in the scheme, at an overall cost of €2.5 million. As for the return, one third of the people who have left will not be replaced, one third are being replaced at a reduced cost, while one third are being replaced at a similar cost. Overall, we will recover the cost of the scheme in a two and a half year period.