A Government move to change the new location of a division of the Department of Social and Family Affairs is proof of the poor planning which was behind the decentralisation initiative, Fine Gael has claimed.
The party's TD in Cavan-Monaghan, Mr Seymour Crawford, said it was clear there was no adequate planning behind the initiative after the Department revealed that its Comhairle division will move to Drogheda, Co Louth, instead of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.
He described as "bunkum" the explanation offered for the change by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Ms Coughlan, who said it followed a special request from the board of the division. Comhairle operates services such as the Citizens' Information Network and the Citizens' Information Phone Service.
A spokesman for Ms Coughlan said the change was sought because there was no rail service to Carrickmacross for disabled people, who may require it.
Mr Crawford said the Government was playing with peoples' lives and careers by changing the new location of the division long after the application process had begun. "I genuinely think it is \ because if there had been any thought put into this, these sort of things wouldn't have happened. There was a lack of thought and a lack of proper planning. There was no preliminary planning exercise undertaken."
According to preliminary results from the Central Applications Facility website, which is managing decentralisation applications, some 50 State employees had expressed an interest in moving to Carrickmacross by early July. While this was sufficient to fill the 47 posts available, none of Comhairle's 47 staff in Dublin were interested in moving. In addition, only 18 of those who wished to move were Dublin-based civil servants or State agency staff.
Mr Crawford welcomed the fact that Ms Coughlan indicated that she will compensate Carrickmacross for the loss of 47 jobs by allocating 85 other jobs in her Department to the town. The Minister said a number of sections in her Department's Corporate Development division are being considered. These include business development, corporate services, facilities management and the regional director's office.
A final decision will be made when the results from the application process are collated after the deadline of September 7th.