Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Question 131: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills if she will respond to a query (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37104/10]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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Proposals submitted to my Department by Institutes of Technology during the period 1st January to 31st March 2009 initially involved a total of 31 proposed voluntary early retirements, with added years, for academic staff. However, my Department was subsequently informed in March, 2009 by an Institute that one of the applicants included in its submission had withdrawn. Furthermore, following reconsideration by the Institute, it had decided to reduce the number of proposed voluntary early retirements from 16 to 8. Therefore, in consequence of this decision, the total number of active VER proposals received in my Department for the period in question was 22.

Prior to 2009 the policy was that consideration would be given to proposals from Institutes of Technology for voluntary early retirement with added years of staff in instances where *the individual was in a post that was no longer required for various reasons such as falling numbers on a particular programme or the discontinuance of a course for which there was insufficient demand, *the person in question was near to retirement age, *redeployment or retraining was not feasible, *it could be demonstrated by the Institute that voluntary early retirement was the most economically advantageous option in the particular circumstances, *the individual staff member would not be replaced thus reducing the Institute's overall staff complement.

Each individual proposal was considered on its merits and where sanctioned it was with the approval of the Department of Finance and subject to any conditions imposed by that Department.

The operation of these arrangements had the effect of achieving savings for the State where redundant skills were no longer required.

This policy was suspended in late 2008 pending the development of a new policy by the Department of Finance that emerged in early 2009 in the form of the Incentivised Early Retirement Scheme (ISER), which does not allow for added years. When announcing the new ISER in his supplementary budget speech of 4th April 2009, the Minister for Finance announced that this would be the only voluntary early retirement scheme that the Government intended to make available in the civil and public services.