Almost all staff members at the new offices of the Data Protection Commissioner, which are due to be officially opened by Tánaiste Michael McDowell in Portarlington, Co Laois, in 10 days' time, are newly employed.
This is because 21 of the Dublin-based agency's 22 staff refused to move there earlier this year under the Government's decentralisation plan.
At a conference in Dublin yesterday, the Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, said that "almost 100 per cent" of the staff in his office were new to the job.
Last night, he said just one of his previous 22 staff - who are currently based in Abbey Street in Dublin - had chosen to relocate to the Co Laois town.
The offices open on Monday, with the official opening by Mr McDowell a week later.
Describing the move to Portarlington as "positive decentralisation", Mr Hawkes said he was "very happy" with the quality of staff recruited.
However, he acknowledged that he was sad to see some of his "excellent" older staff leave. While some of the new posts were oversubscribed, in other instances there was a "limited choice" of applicants for some posts at the new offices.
He said he had largely expected that few if any of his former staff would be willing to take part in the decentralisation process.
"Most of them were based in Dublin. So basically the chances of them wanting to go to Portarlington were quite small," he said.
"This is positive decentralisation. We are an independent office which can operate anywhere. This means that our office is full of staff who are rearing to go and who want to be in Portarlington.
"I'm not pretending it has been easy, but there are also positives that come with new staff. We have put in place crash programmes to train up the new staff, and they're responding very well to that."
Most of his former staff, who work as general civil servants, have been redeployed within the Department of Justice, Equality and Law reform and its agencies, according to Mr Hawkes.
Among the roles performed by employees of the Data Protection Commissioner's office are the provision of a helpdesk and website, and dealing with complaints and investigations on behalf of the public.