Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Question 248: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of persons within each unit or agency of his Department who have opted to move to the proposed new location for their unit; the number of other Dublin-based employees of his Department who have opted to move to one of the decentralising units within his Department; the number of persons who have to date in 2005 been assigned to each of the decentralising units; and the number of persons who have opted not to move with their decentralising unit who have been reassigned or offered an alternative posting. [36736/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Government's decentralisation programme, announced in December 2003, the development co-operation directorate, DCD, of the Department of Foreign Affairs, currently based in Dublin, is scheduled to decentralise to Limerick. This will involve the relocation of 123 posts and is scheduled to take place during the first quarter of 2007.

Already, a total of 28 posts in the directorate, including that of director general, are filled by officers who have applied to decentralise to Limerick. Of these, 13 officers were already serving within the directorate and three were serving elsewhere in the Department. A total of eight officers were recruited from other Departments via the central applications facility and four were assigned from inter-departmental promotion panels. There are a further 17 officers serving elsewhere in the Department, one based in Dublin and the remainder abroad, who have also expressed an interest in decentralising to Limerick. To date, three officers from DCD, who did not wish to decentralise to Limerick, have been transferred to other divisions of the Department.

The process of transferring to the directorate the officers currently serving elsewhere in the Department and of recruiting further staff for Limerick via the central applications facility will be accelerated in the new year. The aim is that, by the second half of 2006, most posts in the directorate will be filled by staff who will decentralise to Limerick.