Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

When people decentralise and go on to retire, the post remains and is filled where the vacancy arises. It is the posts that one is transferring. It is important to point that out. It is not the case that when people's time is up they will not all relocate back to Dublin. That is not the idea, the idea is to transfer posts. That is a very important point, which I thought would have been understood at this point.

Anyone working in the Civil Service had the right to apply for decentralisation to his or her preferred position. As a former trade unionist, I am sure the Deputy would agree there should be no discrimination in respect of people's ability to relocate based on their original location. I do not believe that is a principle to which the Deputy would subscribe. All civil servants had the right to relocate to whereever they wished, subject to that being a suitable location, to having the skill sets necessary, or to having the ability to take up the retraining for moving from Department to Department.

I do not have the figure. The Deputy should speak to the Minister for Finance about whether there are any more specific figures available.

The decision of the Government in October 2008 will facilitate the location of up to 6,000 posts in 40 locations outside of Dublin. This is made up of 2,600 posts already moved with an additional 3,400 in train at present. I cannot give the geographical addresses of those people in terms of where they are from. That is not available to me. The Deputy should check with the sponsoring Department if that information is available.

The success or failure of the programme is not dependent on what percentage of people are Dublin people. They are all public servants who had a right to relocate if they so wished. Some were from Dublin and others were not. Some may have been living in Dublin for some time but still regard themselves as Galway people, such as Deputy Gilmore. The same applies to County Offaly also.

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