Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide in tabular form the number of agencies, bodies, boards, quangos or other entities, which are financed from, answerable to or established by his Department that have been abolished, merged or re-organised since this Government took office; the savings that have been realised since the changes were made; the level of staff reduction that has been achieved; if he will provide details of further agency reductions that he intends to pursue in 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57880/12]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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A comprehensive programme of rationalisation has been implemented across Department of Health funded agencies since mid-2008. The primary aim of the of the rationalisation programme is to streamline service delivery, professional registration and policy making in a number of areas in the health sector, through the integration and/or amalgamation of functions. The extent of savings will vary between organisations and the majority of staff will be redeployed to other public service bodies. Efficiencies will derive from economies of scale and the elimination of duplication in areas such as recruitment, procurement, payroll and ICT.

Primary legislation was/is required to dissolve each individual agency. Since the Government took office, the following progress has been made:

The Drug Treatment Centre Board is scheduled to be dissolved and subsumed into the HSE shortly. It is envisaged that the drafting of the Bill to subsume the Opticians Board into CORU will commence this year and that rationalisation will be finalised in 2014.

As part of the Public Service Reform Plan announced on 17th November 2011, my Government announced 6 further bodies to be considered for rationlisation.