Decentralisation plan - Civil service move not thought out

Despite any gloss with which he may try to mask the question of decentralisation, Tom Parlon, the minister with responsibility to implement it, should accept the inevitable.

It is not working, and is unlikely ever to work.

Having failed in the course of the past three years since it was mooted to make any great inroads in transferring civil servants out of Dublin, it is unlikely to happen now, other than on an unsatisfactory piecemeal basis.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, while not indicating he was abandoning the policy of decentralisation, appeared to be more pragmatic when he admitted in the Dáil that there was “no appetite” within State agencies to move.

The simple truth of the matter is that the majority of those targeted by the State to uproot from Dublin are hostile to the idea, and there is, at this stage, more than a whiff of the e-voting fiasco clouding it.

Unlike that episode, it should not be relentlessly pursued simply because it is Government policy, one which is, literally, going nowhere.

Mr Parlon does not have an answer. He has admitted that he does not know what the solution is.

In other words, it is Government policy to move 10,000 civil and public servants out of the capital to 50 locations around the country but nobody knows how to accomplish it.

Not unless there are sufficient volunteers, which has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

The Taoiseach recognised this fact by acknowledging that the figures on the take-up have been very small in that regard.

In the meantime, putative decentralisation is causing problems and unnecessary disruption.

Mr Parlon feebly tried to rationalise the failure to move 100 probation officers to Navan as a “practical, pragmatic solution” since their clients were in Dublin, a fact which was patently self-evident in the first place.

Yesterday morning, there was a communications blackout which hit services at FÁS National Training and Employment Authority centres throughout Dublin, because of a dispute over decentralisation.

The Government wants to compulsorily re-locate about 400 people from the capital to Birr, and the employees are resisting, so much so, that their union SIPTU is planning further disruption in the next few days.

IMPACT, which is the country’s largest public sector trade union, although not opposed to decentralisation has demanded a fundamental overhaul of the scheme.

It claims that it would cost the taxpayers as much as €65 million a year to replace specialist civil servants who wanted to stay in Dublin, which, if true, is ludicrous.

Decentralisation should make good sense, but only if it is planned and executed properly and efficiently, which it phenomenally is not at the moment, relying too much on veiled coercion and improvisation.

If done sensibly, the Taoiseach is right not to abandon the principle, especially as it aims to ease population and traffic pressures in Dublin, while at the same time having a very positive impact on local economies to where people are re-located.

Unquestionably, the policy of decentralisation as it is structured at the moment is in urgent need of remedial attention.