Decentralisation on schedule despite civil servants’ take-up

CONSTRUCTION work will have started by this time next year on 16 of the 53 State departments and agencies selected for decentralisation, it was disclosed yesterday by the group implementing the ambitious plan.

However, Fine Gael immediately raised the spectre that the take-up by public servants is so low that departments and agencies will be operating out of half-filled buildings.

Finbar Flood, chairman of the Decentralisation Implementation Board (DIB), told the Oireachtas all-party committee on finance yesterday that 4,000 staff would have moved out of Dublin by the end of 2008 and 7,000 by the end of 2009.