Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

It is not. This State does not have a good history of redundancy programmes. Sometimes the best people go and then they come back as consultants. We want to ensure before a redundancy programme is devised that we put this organisational structure in place.

On communications, even Deputy Reilly's own organisation, Fine Gael, has a director of communications, who is an excellent person. Surely an organisation that spends a budget of €16 billion is entitled to have a director of communications at a reasonable level. I do not think anybody would begrudge that. It is important for internal communications and for external communications.

All of the directors report to the CEO. Professor Drumm remains the CEO for the organisation. He is given significant powers in the legislation that established the organisation to delegate etc. He remains responsible and people report to him.

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