Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn.

I welcome this opportunity to outline to the House the rationale for the decision taken by the Minister earlier this week to locate the headquarters of the newly-amalgamated county and city of Waterford and Wexford VECs in Wexford with sub-offices in Waterford and Dungarvan.

In January of this year the Department invited submissions from all of the existing VECs on possible headquarters locations when the mergers took place. In responses received, no existing VEC was prepared to suggest a headquarters location other than in its own locality. Some did suggest there should be a headquarters in one location and a sub-office in the other. However, any VEC making such a proposal did not suggest the sub-office might be in its locality. All VECs which made further submissions subsequent to the decision on the revised configuration decided by the Government in June continued in similar vein.

In January, to facilitate submissions the Department gave the following guidance to VECs on the selection of the headquarters locations:

While a number of considerations may come into play a fundamental requirement will be the need to ensure that the location of a VEC headquarters will, to the greatest extent possible, facilitate the distance requirements under which staff to be redeployed to that location can be redeployed under a redeployment scheme, allied to the need to operate at lowest cost having regard to the accommodation available in existing locations.

These key criteria on redeployment and cost-effective accommodation solutions continued to be dominant in considering the locations that were finally determined by the Minister this week. However, as the commercial property market is likely to remain weak for the foreseeable future the likelihood of achieving savings that might defray any costs incurred in consolidating into one single headquarters have become less significant for the short to medium term.

In terms of redeployment, the distance between Waterford city and Wexford exceeds the 45 km distance agreed under the Croke Part agreement on mandatory redeployment. This will preclude redeployment of staff currently employed in Wexford to either Waterford or Dungarvan. Consequently at least one sub-office would be required.

In determining Wexford as a headquarters location the Minister therefore took into account the following additional factors. The 2011 budget for County Wexford VEC is €34.3 million, which will increase given the opening of the first post-primary school in Gorey on 1 September. In contrast, the combined budgets of Waterford city and county VECs for 2011 is €32.61 million. County Wexford has eight VEC post-primary schools, while the two Waterford areas combined have four post-primary schools as well as the college of further education in Waterford city. An assessment of the enrolment of these schools and college indicates approximately 2,860 students are within the County Wexford VEC operations, in comparison to approximately 2,640 within the operations of Waterford city and county VECs. County Wexford VEC is also a joint trustee of two additional schools which cater for more than 2,050 additional students.

According to the 2011 census data, 145,273 people are resident in County Wexford, compared with 113,707 people resident in County Waterford, comprising 46,747 in Waterford city and 66,960 in Waterford county. In addition to this, Wexford saw a population increase of 10.3% between 2006 and 2011, while Waterford saw an increase of 5.3%.

The Minister has decided to maintain sub-offices in both Waterford city and Dungarvan. I thank Senator Cullinane for affording me the opportunity to respond to the House on this matter