Early retirements pose experience gap

In a few weeks time, thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, gardaí, and other civil servants are going to take early retirement in order to avail of the best pension deal.

This could cause an even bigger upheaval in the public service than was threatened by the announcement of the decentralisation programme in 2002.

Much of the proposed decentralisation never materialised, because the whole thing had not been properly planned. Decentralisation is not yet dead, but the Government has abandoned about 40 of the projects, and only 22 others are still being considered.