It has emerged that the merger of three VEC governing bodies in Wexford and Waterford has led to no reduction in numbers employed.
The merger came about as a result of the last governments policy to reduce the number of VEC’s in the country.
The merger involved Wexford VEC, County Waterford VEC and Waterford City VEC.
It is now called the Waterford Wexford Education and Training Board.
However, under public service rules, employees could not be asked to move to a new office more than 50 kilometres away from their current place of work.
As the three offices were more than 50km from each other, they all continued to operate as before, except under the umbrella of one VEC and with the same number of employees.
The then Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin set a target of abolishing up to fifty semi state bodies in an effort to cut government expenditure during his term in office.
