Decentralisation must be voluntary: Public service union

The Public Service Executive Union has expressed fears that its members may be forced to move out of Dublin under the Government’s decentralisation plan.

It emerged yesterday that civil servants based in Dublin had applied for just one-third of the jobs on offer under the decentralisation plan.

The PSEU said it feared this could lead to a watering down of the voluntary aspect of the programme and it warned that it would only co-operate if nobody was forced to move against their will.

The union’s deputy general secretary, Tom Geraghty, said: “We want to make it absolutely clear that there’s no question of the voluntary nature of this proposal being changed. We simply won’t tolerate it.”