Decentralisation is a smokescreen that could turn into a time bomb

By Ryle Dwyer FIANNA FÁIL promised that, if they were returned to power, only 20% of workers would be paying the highest rate of tax.

But instead of going down, the percentage has been going up since they returned to power. Last year it went from 27.9% to 30.5% and it is expected to go to 34.4% next year. That’s another promise broken but breaking election promises is no longer news.

Some people have been clamouring for the Government to act on the promise to proceed with the decentralisation that Charlie McCreevy announced in the 1999 Budget. Fianna Fáil first promised decentralisation in the 1960s while Jack Lynch was Taoiseach but the latest announcement was the most far-reaching, though what all of this really had to do with the Budget is anybody’s guess.

Cheltenham Charlie announced that eight whole departments, including ministers and senior staff, are to be transferred from Dublin as far away as Killarney, Wexford and Cavan. With the improvements in communications, people can get together from around the world on a conference call over the internet, and they can do likewise from one end of this country to the other.

If more than 10,000 civil servants move out of Dublin, it should ease the housing crisis in the capital and free up a considerable amount of office space. Many civil servants will welcome an opportunity to work closer to their family homes, and some of the Dubs will like the idea of the culchies moving out. There will, however, have to be flexibility of movement within the various departments, if this is to work.

Civil servants from Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal might welcome the transfer of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to Cavan, just as people from the south-west could welcome the chance to move to Killarney, while those from the south-east might jump at the opportunity of working in Wexford. But it is not going to be much good if people who wish to go to Kerry end up in Cavan and those from Donegal find themselves in Wexford.

Modern technology provides the means for effective decentralisation, but only if that technology is used. That needs to be implemented rather than allowing the whole public service abuse the system in the same way that the few have previously been able to exploit things to their own financial advantage.

It is going to become prohibitively expensive if civil servants are allowed to visit the various offices and collect mileage expenses.

The rates for civil servants have little relationship to the actual cost of travel with the result that the whole thing

becomes a tax-free perk by which people can supplement their annual salary handsomely. Public servants are allowed to collect E1.07 for the first 4,000 miles and 50 cent per mile thereafter. Somebody travelling 20,000 miles in a year would pay around E2,000 in petrol, so when buying a new set of tyres that person should have over E9,000 to spare, which would be the equivalent of E13,000 when income tax is considered. In Dublin, civil servants have only to travel down the hall or negotiate a flight of stairs to get to somebody else in the department but decentralisation is going to make room for the kinds of rip-offs that some civil servant and members of the Oireachtas have been able to engage in for years. Will the civil servants now also be entitled to overnight expenses just to visit their offices? Politicians get E137.67 overnight expenses for very short distances. The electorate has no right to expect them to travel home after putting in a hard day in the bar!

With the agencies under various departments being scattered around the 26 counties, this could prove the greatest boom for civil servants. There might not be that far between the Department of Tourism in Killarney and Fáilte Ireland in Mallow, but what about the Department of Marine in Cavan and An Bord Iascaigh Mhara in Clonakilty?

Nobody could be expected to drive that far to do a day’s work, and then travel back to Cavan, so each of those visits will incur overnight expenses.

There may be no train between Cavan and Clonakilty but, you watch, this Government will build a gravy train!

The minister insists that the moves will all be voluntary. Many people are undoubtedly settled in Dublin, with children who may have been born in Dublin. Moreover, due to the policies previously implemented by Charlie McCreevy, their spouses may also have jobs in Dublin. They will be very loathe to leave.

When the Legal Aid Board was moved to Caherciveen, only three of 31 staff members agreed to move Kerry. The same thing is going to happen with many people in the eight departments being moved.

WHAT will happen to those people who refused to move?

Everybody probably knows somebody employed by the Government or one of the semi-State organisations who balked at a transfer and was left in place to do nothing other than collect his or her salary.

Their jobs moved but they stayed put, and they were able to end their careers just waiting around until they reached retirement age.

Retirement will no longer be compulsory at 65. Henceforth people who are capable of doing the job will be allowed to continue working. This should be welcomed, but what about those who are doing nothing? They will be capable of doing that forever, and the one way of getting rid of them will be gone. It already seems almost impossible to sack an incompetent in the civil service.

If the Government were a business, it would long since have gone into liquidation. If it allows the civil servants to abuse the changes in the system, decentralisation will soon turn into a serious financial drain. Will the Government take a stand? This Government has not only reneged on its promises during the last campaign, it did likewise after the general election in 1997, when Fianna Fáil promised zero tolerance. What we got was even more tolerance of crime. Of course, a lot of it went on within Fianna Fáil itself.

There have been a whole series of allegations against Fianna Fáil politicians. Tom Gilmartin stated that he gave £50,000 to Pádraig Flynn for Fianna Fáil, but neither Gilmartin nor Flynn has yet been called by any of the tribunals to testify about that money. There has been testimony that Ray Burke was given £35,000 for the party, and Edmund Farrell testified that the Irish Permanent Building Society gave Charles Haughey a total of £100,000 for Fianna Fáil in 1986.

Michael Smurfit and Mark Kavanagh testified that they gave him substantial sums for the party the following year, but most of it never got to Fianna Fáil. Yet no complaint has been made to the gardaí.

Consequently, they have not investigated any of these serious allegations.

In the case of the money given to Haughey, we know that much of it was deposited in the leader’s fund and then spent with the help of Bertie Ahern, who provided the necessary second signature on the cheques.

Nobody is talking about that now. They are talking about decentralisation which is probably the greatest smokescreen in the history of the State. But it could also turn out to be a real time bomb.