Decentralisation to continue - Cowen

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen insisted that the Government’s decentralisation proposals would go ahead in the face of strong Opposition criticism.

“In fact, the decentralisation programme, for those who decentralise, has been an unmitigated success in terms of their own quality of life, work environment and a whole range of issues, including the efficiency by which they deliver services.’’

Mr Cowen said that in a more localised environment, services were being provided which had previously been less accessible to people in the regions.

The Government would continue to seek to implement the programme “in a prudent and proper way’’, working in partnership with staff organisations and unions.

Earlier, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said he had never said decentralisation was a bad idea.

“I don’t think decentralisation can be judged solely on whether there are staff who are willing to be decentralised to certain offices and whether or not they are happy when they do so. I have no doubt that they are.’’

The issue, said Mr Gilmore, particularly in the new economic climate, was whether the current Government’s decentralisation plan represented value for money for the public. “As far as I know, the projected cost of the entire decentralisation plan is somewhere in the order of €900 million.’’

He asked whether it was a good idea to proceed with spending this amount of money on relocating civil and public servants in circumstances where there was going to be a continuing cost to the public purse in travel.

It was interesting, said Mr Gilmore, that the OECD was not asked to comment on decentralisation, but had volunteered to do so.

“And the comment it has volunteered on it is not complimentary about the decentralisation plans being put through. It is saying that some areas of the public service which are being decentralised will require a 90 per cent change in the staff to be effective.’’

The implication, said Mr Gilmore, was that this would be bad for the delivery of the service.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the initial announcement, by the then minister for finance, Charlie McCreevy, was to move 10,000 public servants to 53 locations inside three years. “That is a very long time ago.”

The OECD had offered the critique, said Mr Kenny, that if the Government continued with the way it was implementing decentralisation, it would fragment the quality of the public service being provided.

It was now known that decentralisation had negatively affected the roll-out of national broadband, which was critical to industrial and business development around the State.

The manner in which the decentralisation process had been managed was an “unholy mess’’.