Civil servants crisis: only one in three want to move

ONLY one-in-three civil servants whose jobs are to be relocated have volunteered to move out of the capital under the Government's decentralisation plan.

The figure is even worse at State agencies, where only one-in-seven Dublin-based workers want to move.

However, as unions and opposition parties warned the controversial plan had begun to unravel, Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy announced the destination of another 1,220 decentralised posts - 715 of them to his home county of Kildare.

The latest jobs, comprised mostly of IT specialists, make up the final tranche of the 10,300 positions to be decentralised to more than 50 locations in the next three years.

But a Central Applications Facility (CAF), established three months ago, has received just 330 applications from State agency staff in Dublin willing to move - hugely short of the Government's target of 2,200.

In addition, the Government is seeking to move a further 6,300 civil service posts from the capital, but has received just 2,200 applications for those jobs.

Conceding the figures fell short of expectation, Mr McCreevy said he was disappointed with the poor volunteer rate for the State agencies. Nevertheless, he said he regarded the overall result as "a very encouraging start to a programme which is still in its infancy".

Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants general secretary Seán O'Riordan disagreed and said the figures confirmed the difficulties the union had predicted all along. "When you decipher it, I think its catastrophic," he said. According to Mr O'Riordan, yesterday's figures reveal just over 7% of Dublin-based civil servants actually want to move with their own department.

"How do you run an organisation on the basis of needing almost completely new staff?" he said.

That point was echoed by IMPACT national secretary Peter Nolan. "There's a totally deficient number of people willing to move and that creates a huge difficulty in relation to continuity of service," he said.

SIPTU president Jack O'Connor, whose members boycotted the CAF application scheme, said the feasibility of decentralisation should now be questioned.

"The Government made a commitment this would be on a voluntary basis and we need to ensure they are made to adhere to that commitment," he said.

Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said decentralisation was unravelling. "Rather than do the groundwork with the staff and departments involved, they (the Government) used and abused the process for party political gain," he said.