O’Donoghue keeps decentralisation pledge after 22 years

SPORTS Minister John O’Donoghue was credited yesterday with keeping a promise he made back in the early 1980s to decentralise Government jobs to south Kerry.

Mr O'Donoghue jokingly offered to make Pat Rabbitte his election agent after the Labour leader highlighted a commitment made by Fianna Fáil in 1982 to decentralise to Killarney.

Describing the present round of decentralisation as a political stroke, Mr Rabbitte said it reminded him of a 1982 advertisement in a Kerry newspaper featuring a fresh-faced Mr O'Donoghue promising that FF would move the Department of Justice to Killarney.