Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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30. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the amount spent on administration and staffing for the election observation roster; the administrative and staffing budget for 2020; the additional costs in terms of travel and expenses in having the election observation unit in two separate geographic locations in each of the past three years to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4626/20]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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The budget for international election observation in a normal year is €180,000. In 2018 the allocation was augmented to €250,000 to facilitate the mustering of a new roster of volunteers. This included the cost of an additional temporary clerical officer to support the team managing the roster during that mustering process.

The elections observation team is currently comprised of four officials, most of whom have additional duties in addition to their roles as part of this team: due to a high volume of correspondence and to facilitate mustering a new roster of volunteers and associated vetting post-GDPR, additional staff were assigned to the team in 2018-19. All team members are located in Dublin. In 2018 two team members, based in my Department's Limerick office, managed the operation of the roster of volunteers.

Given that the volume of work with any given observation mission varies substantially, and as the team members work on other matters between missions, it is not possible to disaggregate administrative costs additional to the annual budget.