Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I will answer a question later about the number and grades of officials involved in decentralisation.

Decentralisation will not create difficulties for customer service standards. Various working groups have considered how to deal with this issue and have done some excellent work on it. There is plenty of experience to work with because decentralisation has been a successful practice in the Civil Service for 15 years and the groups are used to dealing with the process. They are considering how it will operate in the future when other Departments move, which I am confident will happen equally successfully.

I answered a parliamentary question last week on the number of contracts in my Department and if the Deputy wishes to put down a particular question I will give him the full details. Most of the contracts have come either from social partnership or the information society group. There will be no change in that. The Department does not have, and would never employ, the expertise to undertake reports and surveys on Sustaining Progress or any other programme. Such surveys will always come from outside the Department. We do not have specialists in those areas and would not have enough work to employ them full-time so I would not recommend taking them on.

The Deputy can see from the list that most of the contracts in my Department came in on, or in many cases under, budget.

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