John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

We would like to employ more people, that goes without saying. In these financially straightened times, however, where do we find the money? Everyone must ask that question. We cannot just continue to employ and pay people, we had to make difficult decisions. This was a difficult decision for me but I hope we are doing it in a way that does not affect services to a huge degree. That is all we can do under the circumstances. We have introduced a number of creative solutions, such as the incentivised career break scheme, where staff could take a three year career break and receive an incentive payment of a third of their gross basic pay up to a maximum of €12,500 per annum. A total of 295 local authority staff were approved for this scheme. That is what we are trying to do and, overall, we are managing well under the circumstances.

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