Fine Gael speaks out of both sides of its mouth on decentralization

LESS than three weeks ago Enda Kenny made some ground with a well-crafted speech at his party’s mini árd fheis in Galway.

He pledged that Fine Gael would lead the way in restoring trust between the people and their politicians. Within weeks this pledge rings hollow. Fine Gael has been caught speaking out of both sides of its mouth on decentralisation.

Over the last four years the party has been pressuring the Minister for Finance to say when, and to where, departments will be decentralised around the country.

Fine Gael TDs, like all others, have been calling for their local towns to be favoured. Lo and behold when Minister McCreevy rolled out a Budget day plan for decentralisation, Fine Gael was caught off guard. Unbalanced by the scale of the Government's decentralisation programme, Fine Gael has been left sounding decidedly incoherent. Anyone who heard leading Fine Gael figures speaking on this topic in the last week could be forgiven for thinking that the party opposed decentralisation.

Last Thursday, in the Dáil and TV studios, John Bruton argued against decentralisation. He asked: "What is a capital city, and why does every country have one? Capital cities exist in most democracies to make policy at national level."

Bruton seems to favour only some kind of decapitated decentralisation. He believes that it is OK for the bulk of the body of a department to be sent to a provincial town, but its policymaking head must be left in Dublin in order to be effective.

Bruton's stance is not only inconsistent with all of Fine Gael's utterances on decentralisation since the idea was announced in 2000, but it is also inconsistent with his own previous stance on decentralisation of EU institutions.

As Taoiseach, John Bruton trumpeted his own success at securing the European Food and Veterinary Office for Dunboyne in Co Meath. At that time he was not heard to argue that the agency director and its senior management should remain in Brussels. In fact, Fine Gael has argued repeatedly that when government departments were being decentralised, the entire department, including the higher echelons, should be decentralised. For example, in July 2000 Michael Noonan then John Bruton's finance spokesman warned, in Tralee, that "any decentralisation of government departments to Tralee or Kerry should see the entire department moving, and not just a section. It is vital to move policy makers as well as general staff". However, even Noonan disagreed with his own previous position in a radio interview last Thursday.

Gay Mitchell also has strong views against decentralisation. Last Thursday he slammed Minister McCreevy for "asset-stripping" Dublin and "pulling out part of Dublin's life-giving services for crude transplantation to rural constituencies". Mitchell's outburst is at odds with what used to be the view of Fine Gael's other Dublin city deputy, Richard Bruton. In the Dáil on April 8 last, Richard Bruton complained about the delay in decentralisation while "... at the same time, Dublin grows apace. The city is choked with traffic and people are unable to move around it while towns around the country are crying out for decentralisation." Fine Gael has dismissed McCreevy's announcement as a political stunt and an election gimmick. If it is a political stunt or electioneering to announce the implementation of decentralisation, then presumably it is also a political stunt or electioneering to call for such decentralisation. A quick look at the Dáil record for the last year reveals that Fine Gael has also being electioneering fairly heavily with decentralisation.

On January 29 last, the Fine Gael spokesperson on Transport, Denis Naughten, used the Dáil's written questions procedure to ask Minister McCreevy whether Boyle would be included in the decentralisation programme.

The minister gave him a standard holding reply that submissions from 120 towns, including Boyle, were being considered and an announcement would be forthcoming. No doubt that was enough to get Naughten mention in the Roscommon Herald as championing Boyle's cause. On February 11, Fine Gael's Limerick West deputy Dan Neville asked the Minister for Finance whether a joint proposal from Listowel, Kilrush and Newcastle West would feature in the decentralisation programme. It can be presumed that he publicised his support for Newcastle West locally.

On February 19, the Fine Gael Clare backbencher Pat Breen as part of his campaign for Kilrush asked the minister a more general question about when the decision about decentralisation would be made.

ON February 25, Jimmy Deenihan from Kerry North not to be outdone by his Limerick West colleague also asked the minister whether the joint proposal from Listowel, Kilrush and Newscastle West would be part of the decentralisation programme. Presumably a follow-up press release was sent to Radio Kerry and the Kerryman.

On March 11, Denis Naughten again asked the minister about decentralisation, although his interests were wider than Roscommon on that occasion.

Two weeks later, on March 25, Fine Gael's health spokesperson Olivia Mitchell asked the minister the same general question on decentralisation.

On the same day, the Fine Gael Spokesperson on Justice, John Deasy, got in on the act. Deasy's particular concern, unsurprisingly, was whether the minister would decentralise a whole department to Waterford and the outlying towns of the county. A quest for column inches in the Munster Express or airtime on WLR FM, surely.

Of course, Fine Gael wasn't alone in its zeal for decentralisation. All of this was interspersed with similar questions from Labour deputies and occasionally from government backbenchers but Fine Gael was particularly zealous.

A week later, on April 2, the Wexford Fine Gael backbencher, Paul Kehoe, asked the minister whether plans for decentralisation would include the sunny south-east.

On April 8, Fine Gael's Paul McGrath raised the decentralisation issue again in a Dáil written question. This was a somewhat facile question asking the minister to compare rental costs of office spaces between Dublin and provincial towns and asking him whether, as a result of this information, the departments would save money from decentralisation.

The same day Jimmy Deenihan was back with his old question again this time as an oral question to the minister.

Seymour Crawford, the Fine Gael deputy for Cavan-Monaghan, used the short supplementary debate following Deenihan's question to make a particular plea for decentralisation to the border counties. And it continued after the Easter recess the pattern of questioning was similar and autumn saw more of the same.

If, as Fine Gael alleges, the Government's announcement about decentralisation is a cynical, vote-catching ploy in advance of next summer's local elections, then presumably all of the above Dáil questions and the follow-up local media releases are also just cynical, vote catching ploys.

Heaven forbid.