Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Question 70: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the number of staff from his Department who have been decentralised to locations outside Dublin to date; the cost to the Exchequer to date of his Department's decentralisation programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27344/07]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I would refer the Deputy to my previous reply on 9th October 2007 (Ref. No. 22544/07).

Again, I am pleased to be able to report that my Department's Decentralisation Programme is firmly on target. Under the Programme, over nine hundred posts from my Department and its agencies are scheduled to relocate to seven provincial locations. To date, over four hundred assignments have been made and it is anticipated that close to five hundred posts will have moved out of Dublin by the end of this year. With over two years of the programme yet to run, we will have a presence in all seven locations by the end of 2007 and this represents more than 50% of the overall number of posts scheduled to move.

As the Deputy will be aware, the costs in respect of property solutions under decentralisation are primarily a matter for the Office of Public Works and these costs account for the bulk of the expenditure. The non-property costs incurred by my Department up until the middle of this year, in areas such as I.T., office equipment and training, amounted to just over one million euro.