Mr Fixit to unblock logjam

Phil Flynn, trade union boss-turned business troubleshooter has a proven track record in solving industrial disputes. He now heads the Government’s controversial decentralisation strategy. KYRAN FITZGERALD reports.

'It is a good job to take on, very often you do a job and it is hard to measure the progress'

Phil Flynn: "For us to acquire sites and buildings, you are looking realistically at a three-year time frame.

THIS week, the Decentralisation Implementation Group, chaired by former ICTU president Phil Flynn produced its first report, a document that raises as many questions as it answers.

Mr Flynn, the country's leading private industrial relations mediator, has been handed something of a hospital pass by the Government. It will be interesting to see just how he manages to swerve his way out of trouble.

In fact, such problem-solving exercises are meat and drink to this man. The son of a carpenter, he grew up outside Dundalk. His family knew hardship after his father was disabled in an accident. Mr Flynn senior lost his TB allowance when his son reached 14 and was considered ready to go out to work.

His parents kept him in school. At this time the mid-50s he attended his first Sinn Féin meeting where the teenager was swayed by addresses by Ruaírí Ó Brádaigh and the barrister, Seamus Sorahan. In 1957, he emigrated to London, travelling on the Queen Maude with his father. He eventually got a job as a health service officer and became active in the National Union of Public Employees, NUPE.

Older officials saw his potential and his union secured a scholarship at the London School of Economics where he studied industrial relations.

In the 60s, he returned to Ireland and joined the local government union, the LGSPU and rose to become general secretary. The outbreak of the Troubles led him back towards Sinn Féin and he eventually became vice president.

In 1984, he stood down and was soon heavily involved in the embryonic social partnership process. From the mid-70s it is said that he backed the peace strategy.

Respectability arrived in the form of a lunch invite from then Labour minister Ruaírí Quinn and he was soon involved with Mr Quinn's successor, Bertie Ahern in helping to put together the Programme for National Recovery. In 1991, the large new public sector union, IMPACT was formed.

Flynn shared the position of general secretary with another young turk, Greg Maxwell. Mr Maxwell eventually left the union and now works as a senior executive in the voluntary sector.

Phil Flynn meanwhile, assumed the ICTU presidency, the pinnacle of his union career. In 1996, he stood down as IMPACT general secretary to take up a position as an industrial relations consultant. It seems there is hardly an argument that takes place that is not eventually settled by Phil Flynn. Increasingly, private mediation is being used to supplement the efforts of the Labour Court and Labour Relations Commission.

Donning his Superman cape, he helped avert power strikes at the ESB and presided over a succession of settlements at Aer Lingus, beginning with a part in the 1993 survival plan. He helped wrap up the postmasters' dispute in 2002 while in 1998, he acted as a special advisor to Public Enterprise Minister, Mary O'Rourke, on the introduction of legislation on competition in the electricity market. At the time, unions at the ESB were threatening industrial action.

He carried out a major review for the Irish League of Credit Unions following a £30 million-plus plus computerisation fiasco. One of his best-known interventions occurred in the Ryanair recognition dispute in 1998 when he joined forces with former IBEC director general Dan McAuley, to produce a report which allocated blame for the impasse which shut down Dublin Airport to Ryanair and SIPTU management.

Recently, he has been active in the banking sector, assisting in the introduction of new partnership arrangements between AIB and the IBOA.

In the mid 1990s, he assumed the position of chairman of the state-owned ICC Bank, and is now chairman of Bank of Scotland Ireland. Phil Flynn sees nothing strange about this transformation. "In a way, I ran a business as a trade union general secretary. IMPACT had a large staff and a large investment portfolio," he says.

As for his latest role as chairman of the Decentralisation Implementation Group: "It is a good job to take on. Very often you do a job and it is hard to measure the progress achieved. Here, we will be able to do so."

The word being put out is that there will be some degree of give on the Government's part and that the committee will adopt a pragmatic approach, with a concentration on departments and agencies best placed to make the move.

However, suggestions certain locations might "fall off the table" are dismissed. "Two things are not negotiable, the numbers and the locations. As long as we get the numbers, the departments can come up with business plans that make sense. We are trying to encourage creativity," he says.

On the timing of the move, a degree of slippage from the original end-1996 target date originally set by McCreevy is hinted at. "For us to acquire sites and buildings, you are looking realistically at a three-year time frame and that is assuming no great difficulties."

At this week's press conference, it was made clear that decentralisation could be the springboard for radical change in the public service generally. In the words of Charlie McCreevy: "It will change the whole way business is done."

To which Phil Flynn adds the following: "No organisational structure is necessarily forever."

The implementation document talks of tackling the "unnecessarily extensive meetings' culture" in the public service and of promoting e-Government. Suggestions that Euro-style Dublin-based 'cabinets', or shadow departments will be established are dismissed.

The most radical proposal at this stage is the announcement of a new web- based central applications facility modeled on the CAO, which begins& next month. Mr Flynn is also working on other politically-sensitive jobs. "At any point, I am working on 10 consultancy assignments," he says.

Within a fortnight he is due to publish settlement proposals on the long-running pylons dispute between the ESB and community groups in East Cork. "What will come out is something everyone can live with," he says.

An Post is another area of major interest: "It is going through a very difficult financial time. It has a substantial public-service obligation which has never been quantified.

"This has to happen. I think they will come out the far side, but it could take a year. But I do not think the company can wait that long," he says. He has concerns about the way social partnership, here, has turned out.

"If you do not get a buy-in from employers and trade unionists at shopfloor level, then it is just another bargaining tactic," he says.

Politics remains a general interest, particularly the North. "I do not see things going back to where they were but opportunities have been lost in the year.

"Albert Reynolds had a good handle on it but we are letting the grass grow under our feet. The Governments should put more energy into pressuring both sides to engage," he says.