The Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, is embarking on a series of bilateral meetings with all government ministers, similar to the pre-budget bargaining that shapes the annual estimates, to draw up the Government's plans for the decentralisation of the civil service. At the same time, a senior civil servant in the Department of Finance has been appointed to head up a section to deal exclusively with decentralisation. The Government intends sending another 10,000 civil servants to the regions and as there is great uncertainty over which departments, or sections of departments, will be affected, there is much apprehension. Some decisions have been made and they do not inspire all-round confidence in that ministers frequently favour their own constituencies. Thus the Legal Aid Board went to Cahirciveen, home of the Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue; the Disease Surveillance Centre was earmarked for Tullamore, home of the then minister for Health, Brian Cowen; and the Minister for Social Welfare, Dermot Ahern, is relocating his entire accounts section in Dundalk. Sean O'Riordan of the Association of High Civil Servants warned last weekend that his members are not pawns to be moved about at the whim of a minister.
It had been expected that the so called elite departments - Foreign Affairs and Finance - would be exempt. Not so, sources tell Quidnunc. Every department, from the Taoiseach's down, is liable to decentralisation but while some will move in total, probably retaining only the minister's office in Dublin, all are likely to lose some sections.
But when will it all happen? Officially decisions are due by the summer - before the Dail rises on June 29th. Reactions will be very mixed: some are happy to move to the provinces; many others are not - and with an election in the offing (although not before autumn) the Government is most unlikely to do anything that would alienate a substantial section of the electorate.
The Government objectives are to develop the regions, relieve traffic and housing congestion in Dublin, ease the cost of office accommodation, spread jobs and halt rural depopulation. At the moment, few government departments are entirely in the same street, let alone the same building in the capital. With modern technology, if all sections are not together, some may as well be in Donegal.