Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Question 128: To ask the Minister for Finance the way he plans to reduce public service numbers by 27,000; the costs associated with the reduction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45317/10]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The National Recovery Plan states that there will be a cumulative reduction in public service numbers by the end of 2014 of 24,750 since the end of 2008, bringing the total number of public servants to 294,700, a level first exceeded during 2006. The Plan further states, on Page 63, that the end-September 2010 public service numbers are 307,500 on a whole-time equivalent basis.

The end-2014 ceiling of 294,700, therefore, requires a further reduction of 12,800 to be delivered, a substantial portion of which will be secured through the implementation of the HSE voluntary early retirement and voluntary redundancy scheme by 30 December 2010. As the processing of applications is still underway, no final figure is yet available in whole-time equivalent terms but it is projected that it will be in excess of 2,250.

Retirements from a working public service cohort of around 300,000 can be expected to be in the region of 6,000 per annum, so a prudent expectation would be that there will be at least 20,000 retirements over the period of the Plan. On this basis, the numbers reductions set out in the Plan should be capable of being delivered, while still leaving sufficient capacity to replace frontline posts in areas such as the Education and Health Sectors.

For the period 2012-2014, the Plan does not require any assumptions regarding additional incentivised payments, and the costs relating to staff exits are costs relating to pension payments and lump sums which would have arisen in any case in the aggregate, although the precise incidence of these costs from year to year cannot be predicted with certainty. Gross pension allocations are projected to increase from €2.77 billion in 2010 to €3.11 billion in 2014. The costs associated with the HSE early retirement and voluntary redundancy scheme are estimated at approximately €250 million in 2010.