Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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907. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the staffing levels in the agricultural offices in Tralee over the past five years; the level of staffing five years ago versus the level of staffing today in their cultural office on Spa Road, Tralee, County Kerry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46439/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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As you may be aware there has been an extensive reorganisation of the Department’s local office structure in recent years which resulted in the reduction in the number of local offices from 58 to 16. The Department has commenced implementation of a further review of the work in the remaining 16 Regional Offices in order to maximise efficiencies and productivity in the use of resources through revised work practices and processes. The review, which was completed earlier this year, concluded that, arising from the investment in technology and the substantial reduction in disease levels in recent years, there was significant scope for redeployment of administrative staff from local offices.

The review also made several recommendations aimed at improving business processes both within the local offices and in relation to the manner in which it implements various schemes, in particular the disease eradication schemes, with a view to reducing the administrative burden on farmers and the cost to the Department of administering these schemes. The recommendations included, for example, that passports should no longer be taken up from restricted herds and that the practice of issuing movement permits for “clear” cattle in reactor herds should be discontinued. Many of these recommendations have now been implemented and have further significantly reduced the number of the administrative staff needed in the local offices.

With regard to Tralee, my Department has taken the opportunity to recently redeploy the equivalent of 7 full time staff to Shared Payroll Services in Killarney. Arising from the improvements in business processes referred to above and the very substantial reduction in disease levels, the number of administrative and clerical staff in Tralee has been reduced from 20.37 full time equivalents (FTE) in 2008 to 10.6 FTE at present. This policy fits in both with the Department’s objectives in driving efficiency and savings and also with the broad public service reform agenda which facilitates the re-deployment of staff from the local offices to other State agencies and, thereby, enable the Government to provide services through these agencies more efficiently.