merrion street

Minister to bring cost-saving measures to Cabinet

Members of the public and interested parties are being asked by Minister for Transport, Tourism & Sport Leo Varadkar to send in their views on his plan to merge the National Roads Authority (NRA) and the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA).

Interested parties and the general public can send their views about the merger into the Department via e-mail or write to the Department directly. The Minister will shortly seek Cabinet approval for his merger plans, now that the Regulatory Impact Analysis is finished.

Plans to merge the two agencies are in line with the Programme for Government, which is committed to reducing the number of State agencies. Similar proposals were put forward in the McCarthy report of 2009 (Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes), and by the OECD.

Submissions can be made by email to: margaretmalone@dttas.ie

Postal submissions should be posted or delivered to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, 44 Kildare Street, Dublin 2, and marked for the attention of Margaret Malone, Agency Restructuring Division. To ensure your views are taken into account, please make you submission by the 24th May 2011.

Once the consultation process has been completed, a summary of the views submitted will be published on the website of the Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport, along with a list of the organisations and individuals who made submissions.

The summary table of the Regulatory Impact Analysis of the proposal will be placed on the Department of Transport website next week, accessible at the link below from Tuesday 3rd May 2011. It is drawn from the report of the Steering Group which studied the matter in full. The full Steering Group report will also be accessible by clicking on the link below.

 www.dttas.ie/Publications