Only one in five civil servants have moved

MINISTERS were under pressure last night to explain why only one in five civil servants have moved under the Government’s decentralisation plan, launched more than four years ago.

Fewer than 2,000 people have signed up under the scheme and in some departments and agencies just a handful of civil servants have made the move.

Tens of thousands of metres of office space have been rented, bought and built in counties selected for decentralisation.

Many rooms remain empty, however, while civil servants refuse to budge from their Dublin desks.

In Clonakility, Co Cork, some 1,152sq m of building space have been acquired but only 79 people, or half the proposed number of staff from the Department of Communications, have moved there.

In Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim, the Government has paid for 3,716sq m of floor space. Only 118 staff under Martin Cullen, the Social and Family Affairs Minister, have moved there.

Figures up to the end of 2007 show 1,800 have moved under decentralisation, with another 158 set to sign up shortly.

Opposition parties have deemed the project, launched by former finance minister Charlie McCreevy in 2003, a failure.

Mr McCreevy — since he was sent to Brussels as an EU minister by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern — warned the Government would face a catastrophe if it failed to meet its deadline. The promise had been to decentralise 10,300 civil servants by the end of 2006.

New figures released in a parliamentary answer this week show only 110 civil servants out of a planned 460 have decentralised from Transport. Just 139 out of 1,000 have moved from

Enterprise while only 172 have signed up from the 1,310 assigned under Social and Family Affairs.

Fine Gael’s spokesman on public works last night called for an urgent review of decentralisation.

TD Kieran O’Donnell said the lacklustre support by civil servants for the project had to be addressed.

“This was rushed through. It was a headline item thrown out in 2003’s budget.”

He also pointed out that on top of the dismal take-up of the scheme, only 33 out of the 59 decentralised locations were ready to receive staff.

An Oireachtas committee heard last month how staff from the Health and Safety Authority were packed and ready to decentralise to Kilkenny. However, planning permission had still not been obtained for their building.

The Limerick East deputy said that the minister heading decentralisation, Noel Ahern, did not “appear to have a full grasp” of what was needed to fix the process.

He added: “There’s also a lot of buildings unoccupied... but you can’t force people to decentralise.”