It’s about time we decentralise

Pressure is mounting on the Government to implement the promised decentralisation of the various Government departments and agencies.

In December 1999, Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy announced that virtually the whole civil service and non-commercial semi-state bodies would be identified for decentralisation by the middle of the following year.

Each week the Department of Finance received two or three submissions for decentralisation. One hundred and thirty-four towns and cities have formally applied for consideration. Only a fraction of that number can be facilitated, as there is a limit to the number of departments and agencies that can be transferred.

In a number of instances local authorities have been employing consultants to present the case for a specific town or city, and they have also been offering readymade offices to attract the departments and agencies. This should be doubly attractive for the Government, because the transfers could easily be funded by significant savings that would be made by giving up the exorbitantly expensive office space in Dublin. The Government, which currently spends around 80 million on rented property in the capital, either owns or rents a quarter of the office space in the city.

The transfer of some 10,000 civil service jobs from Dublin to different parts of the country would not only have the benefit of boosting the economies of provincial areas but would also ease the demand for space in Dublin not just for office space, but also for living accommodation. This would be an effective way of tackling the serious inflationary pressures in the capital.

Despite the minister's promise to identify the areas for decentralisation by the middle of 2000, the Government did not dare proceed with those plans before this year's general election for fear of provoking a backlash from those towns and cities, which will be disappointed. In the new Programme for Government the current coalition promised to push ahead with decentralisation, taking the National Spatial Strategy into account as part of the overall plan for balanced regional development.

Last night a spokesman for the Department of Finance stressed that Minister McCreevy remains committed to the full implementation of the decentralisation plans.

"There are a huge number of issues to consider and we are not going to be rushed into any decisions," the spokesman said. That was a breathtaking pronouncement.

Nobody in their right mind could accuse them of rushing things. They have been promising decentralisation for almost as long as governments have been promising to drain the Shannon.

And they have been talking about it for years too, a decentralisation programme was first announced by James Ryan, when he was Minister for Finance in the government of Seán Lemass in 1964.

"The only way in which to achieve progress in this matter was for the Government to take a firm decision to send certain departments to named provincial centres," Jack Lynch told the Dáil as Taoiseach three years later.

On November 16, 1967, therefore, he announced that the Department of Education was being transferred to Athlone and the Department of Lands to Castlebar.

The planning process for decentralisation has still not been completed after 35 years, not to mention its actual implementation. It's time the Department of Finance got the proverbial finger out, because the overall benefits for both the provinces and the capital are all too apparent.