Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I will answer the last question first. The mathematics of it is that we are downsizing. It is a falsehood to claim that, after reducing the full quantum, one must add everyone back again. The idea is to do things better and more efficiently and to change work practices. This is the maths of it from the Government's perspective.

We have been involved in planning this process for each sector for months. For example, the Minister for Education and Skills laid out his plans in the House months ago and I have repeatedly heard spokespersons from the HSE outlining its detailed plans right down to hospital health care level.

The Deputy referred to advance notice. I sought three months notice from everyone who wanted to avail of it. People were not required to do so, but many did, which gave us a good idea of most of the numbers leaving so we could account for them. The Deputy is wrong, as she knows, in regard to incentivised schemes. This is simply the playing out of the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2009, which came into force in 2010. That Act provided for a grace period in which people could avail of their pre-cut retirement conditions, in other words, calculate their lump sums and pension rights based on their old salary levels. The Government is not providing an incentive. These are people who are approaching retirement and the previous Dáil enacted legislation to allow them to hold on to their pre-cut pensions and lump sums if they retired by a certain deadline. That deadline has now arrived and we are going to deal with the matter. They are not being incentivised by design nor are they part of a programme of targeting individual areas. The next phase of downsizing will certainly be targeted.

On the specific points raised by the Deputy regarding the Civil Service, the information is on the website. Local managers in Departments and offices are individually reporting to my Department and they have not signalled difficulties in respect of Civil Service provisions. It is important that local managers are allowed to manage. I do not sit in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform individually controlling and managing every local office of the public service.

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