Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

That is really my concern. The Department will end up with additional staff in Dublin that it does not need, at least for a period of time until they can be relocated, and that will have financial implications. These changes will also have implications for the running of the Department. Will the Department lose administrative staff during the relocation? Will it lose policy staff? At what level will these changes have an affect? Will all the principal officers and assistant secretaries be lost to the Department? Will the Secretary General continue to work in the Department? Who exactly is going and who is not? This move has huge potential to cause the Department to lose expertise and experience. I would like to tease out whether the Minister shares such concerns. Having the wrong staff is almost worse than having too many staff. Does the Minister agree there may be problems of co-ordination and cohesion if the Arts Council is in Kilkenny, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism is in Killarney, most of our cultural institutions are in Dublin and the tourism bodies are split between this jurisdiction and the North? The various strands of the Department's activity will be all over the place. I wonder if these plans are manageable, particularly if the Department ends up with policy staff who are entirely new to the business.

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