Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

No, it is not. The costs of the decentralisation programme will continue during the coming financial year and the following year as we complete the process of moving 3,500 people earmarked for relocation to the new areas as agreed. Various decentralisation projects are at different stages of development and they are moving to completion, depending on where they are in the process. They should be completed because many of the 3,500 people are in training posts and posts in parent Departments awaiting to relocate to the new locations and, therefore, that process should be completed.

Having moved the 6,000 staff, we will examine the budgetary situation in 2011 to establish to what extent we can then move to the next phase of the original proposal. That is required as a matter of budgetary realities. We made this decision now in order that we can plan for the proper and orderly relocation of 6,000 staff and move beyond that in 2011 when we can see what is the budgetary situation rather than proceeding across all aspects of the programme, given the current budgetary situation.

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