John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start with Senator Lombard's legitimate points. The day the transfer will happen is being called transfer day. Today is deadline day. It feels like we should be across the water talking about sports arrangements in the new year but this is very serious and we are discussing people's careers. While it is more prevalent in Cork than in other local authority areas, there has always been significant movement of staff between the city and county councils, particularly with promotions. That may change from year to year. As is the case in Galway, in Cork the headquarters for both the county and city councils are in the city. I acknowledge that many local authority staff members are not necessarily based in County Hall or City Hall.

On the day of the deadline, I do not want to pre-empt in the House how many people have applied. The basis of the transfer is primarily voluntary. The Senator also asked who would determine it. The oversight group will have responsibility for looking in detail at who is moving and what numbers need to change. The primary piece that covers that is the section to which Senator Warfield's amendment relates. It refers to population but does not exclude everything else. The last resort, which is a fairly standard provision in terms of public service operations, is a last in, first out for staff. I hope it does not come to that. Ultimately the implementation group will decide on numbers.

In response to Senator Warfield's question, the legislation is quite specific and on line 13 of page 14 states "The Minister shall, in the giving of a direction under subsection (4), have regard to the size of the population of the relevant area and the proportion that it bore to the population of the administrative area of the county council immediately before the transfer day." We mentioned population but did not exclude anything else because the transfer of more than 80,000 from the county to the city represents 19% of the current population of County Cork, but only 2% of the area of County Cork. I have relations living in Goleen, which is closer to where the Leas-Chathaoirleach lives than to where any of the Cork-based Senators to my left live.