Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 172: To ask the Minister for Finance the number of people who have availed of the early retirement scheme as announced by him in budget 2009 in tabular form; the sections of the public service they are from; and the level of position they held. [28028/09]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Officials from my Department are currently engaged in a process of collecting the necessary information that is required to provide a fuller answer to this Parliamentary Question from the line Departments. It is anticipated that this information will be available shortly and I will be writing to Deputy Coveney in the near future.

The information to hand indicates that, by the end of June, some 400 civil servants had applied to the Incentivised Scheme for Early Retirement and that sanction had been conveyed in some 213 cases. Furthermore, there had been some 17 applications from public servants. Departments are reporting a high level of queries about the scheme. It is anticipated therefore, at this stage, that significantly higher numbers of applications will be received by the time of the closing date on 1 September next, although, at this stage, it is not possible to quantify the likely number of applicants.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 173: To ask the Minister for Finance the number of people who have availed of the career break scheme as announced by him in budget 2009 in tabular form; the sections of the public service they are from; and the level of position they held. [28029/09]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Officials from my Department are currently engaged in a process of collecting the necessary information that is required to provide a fuller answer to this Parliamentary Question from the line Departments. It is anticipated that this information will be available shortly and I will be writing to Deputy Coveney in the near future.

The information to hand indicates that, by the end of June, nearly 300 civil servants had applied to the Special Incentive Career Break Scheme. The closing date of the scheme for civil servants was 1 July 2009. Other areas of the public service have set later dates for applications so that the overall impact of the scheme cannot be assessed until later this year. The HSE has suspended the scheme because several Trades Union have instructed their members not to co-operate with redeployments arising from the operation of the schemes outlined in the supplementary budget.