Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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329. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the efforts that have been made by her and her Department to address the issue of staff restructuring in the 16 ETBs that have been established (details supplied). [31668/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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In October 2011, my predecessor announced and published the headquarter and sub office locations where VECs were being merged as a result of the Government decision to reduce the 33 vocational education committees (VECs) to 16 new entities, to be known as education and training boards (ETBs).

It is a matter for the chief executive of each ETB to work through and judge what the best approach is to ensure the optimum approach to service delivery. We are not forcing any "one size fits all" approach to staff deployment and office accommodation by the ETBs. Instead, my Department has been, and will be, receptive to any reasonable and sensible arrangements that are the best fit for the needs of the areas served by the board.

My officials are working to assist ETBs to reform, standardise and move certain ETB back office functions to a shared service model, in line with the whole-of-Government approach in this area. A Business Case Report for a Payroll Shared Service was prepared recently and a similar exercise in respect of finance functions is underway.

Interim steps to address risks in existing systems, improve efficiency and assist in the mergers are taking place. These include a project to stabilise existing payroll systems, the merger of a number of payroll and financial management systems, the introduction of a portal system through which certain payments will be processed and improving ICT connectivity for ETBs.

My Department is also engaged in a project to devise future complementary organisational designs for ETBs and SOLAS in order to reflect their new roles. The Project incorporates a migration plan which will have regard to the agreed high level structure for SOLAS and public service resource constraints in setting out the mechanisms through which the organisational designs will be achieved.