Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 2 and 3 together.

The Office of the Attorney General is organised into two legal areas, one to provide legal advice and the other to produce legislative drafting. These two functions are supported by a shared administration service.

The office constantly reviews its staffing resources, their organisation and workload and, as necessary, adapts to meet the demands of its clients.

The changes can be relatively modest, for example, with a staff member transferring between specialist groups within the office or going on secondment to a Department. On other occasions there can be a more fundamental redistribution of staff and legal topics, both to develop staff expertise and to take into account rising or decreasing workloads in any particular area of law.

At the start of this year such a reorganisation took place in the advisory area of the office following staff changes and a review of the volume and type of work routinely being received. There are five legal groups in the office and the reorganisation involved a redistribution of the specialist topics dealt with by each group as well as the movement of staff members to ensure that the composition of each group is sufficient to carry out their work.

The office has also reduced its staffing numbers by 14 over the past two years. In order to maintain core services, that is, legal advice and legislative drafting, the office reorganised its administration areas to absorb the reductions.

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