Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Question 395: To ask the Minister for Social Protection, further to Parliamentary Question No. 418 of 11 January 2012, if she will confirm that no body or any service operator provided by or supported by any agency under her aegis owns or leases property outside of that vested in the Office of Public Works. [4000/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Deputy refers to Question No 418 of 11 January 2012, and requests verification of the ownership arrangements of properties of any of the agencies under the aegis of my Department. Since responding to his earlier Question on 11 January, I have been made aware that the Citizen Information Board owns five properties. I wish to apologise to the House for this inadvertent error and wish to correct the record where it appeared in the response to Question No 418 of 11 January 2012. Accordingly, I wish to amend the response to Parliamentary Question Number 418 of 11 January 2012 to Deputy Calleary, as follows:

My Department is not involved in matters of management of property.

Responsibility for the acquisition of office accommodation for my Department rests with the Office of Public Works.

None of the properties owned by any of the agencies funded by my Department have a management company in place.

The three statutory bodies operating under the aegis of the Department are the Social Welfare Tribunal, the Citizens Information Board and the Pensions Board. In addition, the Office of the Pensions Ombudsman comes under the remit of the Department.

The Social Welfare Tribunal

The Social Welfare Tribunal does not own any property.

Citizens Information Board (CIB)

A list of all properties owned or leased by the CIB together with the landlords details are in the appendix.

With regard to any service operator provided by or supported by any agency, the CIB funds all the Citizen Information Centres (including Citizens Information Phone Service) and MABS companies in addition to the Sign Language Interpreting Service. There are over 100 companies (delivery partners) funded by the CIB. In a small number of cases the properties are owned by the company, others will have leases with the OPW and the remainder will have leases directly from the landlord.

The Pensions Board

The Pensions Board lease offices from a commercial property company CBRE.

Pensions Ombudsman

The Office of the Pensions Ombudsman does not own or lease any property outside of that vested in the Office of Public Works.