Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Ministerial responsibility for the entire programme rests with the Minister for Finance. The decentralisation implementation group is answerable to the Department of Finance. It is not independent of the Department but works directly to it and the Department of Finance answers for it.

On State agencies, the report of the implementation group continues to emphasise the central role of the board and the management of each agency in driving the process forward. Every Minister should be involved in pressing that. That is what they have been asked to do by the Minister for Finance. The group expects that all agencies should, at a minimum, have initiated HR recruitment policies to support the programme — I understand that has been done — have begun to put phased timeframes in place and be actively securing advance or permanent accommodation solutions in the decentralised location. A clear strategy is laid down, which is the policy of the Department of Finance, and every Department is obliged to follow that.

At the group level there have been meetings with CEOs of State agencies to discuss with them their detailed implementation arrangements. It is true that very few of the agencies want to move out of Dublin because in the two previous rounds of decentralisation there was no agreement on the transfer of staff between agencies.

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