Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. The programme for Government, in the section on jobs and rural development on page 41, it speaks of revitalising all of Ireland and creating a substantial number of jobs - some 135,000 - outside the capital. It says that we are going to give an additional €200 million to the budget of IDA Ireland to help it attract jobs to those particular areas. At what point did the Cabinet decide to begin to reverse the policy of decentralisation? It seems that the information section of the Department of Social Protection is set to be decentralised almost entirely to the Department's office in Dublin. That is 32 positions, and while those individuals will not lose their specific jobs because they will be redeployed into current or future vacancies, it will clearly have an impact on those who wish to transfer back in the direction of the north west as these 32 positions will have to be dealt with first.

It will also have implications from a cost perspective in Dublin, with the establishment of a new section that had been quite successfully decentralised more than ten years ago.

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