Hubs and gateways get only 25% of State jobs

ONLY a quarter of the 10,300 jobs to be decentralised will go to cities and towns identified as centres for development in the National Spatial Strategy, Labour revealed yesterday.

Eight Government departments and the Office of Public Works will be moved entirely out of Dublin to Portlaoise, Killarney, Cavan, Newbridge, Knock airport, Mullingar, Wexford, Drogheda and Trim.

Subsidiaries from the eight departments will be located in a further 42 towns under the decentralisation plan outlined by Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy yesterday.

But only 25% of these jobs will go to the 23 cities and towns identified as key gateways and hubs for development in the Spatial Strategy, Labour’s Environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore said.

“The decentralisation programme was supposed to be the main hope of the National Spatial Strategy in providing a major jobs shift outside Dublin to redress the regional imbalance. But now it seems that there is very little link between the Spatial Strategy and the decentralisation programme,” Mr Gilmore said.

Regions earmarked under the Spatial Strategy and included in the decentralisation plan include Wexford, Killarney, Cavan, Mullingar, Mallow, Sligo, Shannon and Kilkenny. However, the remainder of the so-called gateways and hubs seem to have been ignored by Minister McCreevy, Deputy Gilmore said.

Fine Gael’s Environment spokesperson Bernard Allen said Mr McCreevy’s plan made no sense. “The Spatial Strategy was launched as the great hope for balanced regional development to drive the population growth outside Dublin. But now we see that there is no logic to the overall plan since the Minister for Finance has not given priority to the gateways and hubs.” He claimed the main logic behind the plan was to maximise Fianna Fáil’s successes in next year’s local elections. Environment Minister Martin Cullen rejected this claim.