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ONCE DESCRIBED by the Progressive Democrats in government as representing “gombeen politics”, Fianna Fáil’s enormously wasteful decentralisation programme has finally run out of money and been suspended. At a rough estimate, it has cost a minimum of €360,000 for each of the 2,500 civil and public servants who have been relocated out of Dublin during the past six years. The cost is computed through the sale of €500 million in State property and an additional charge of €400 million for the acquisition of new sites and offices at scores of locations.

Uncosted, unplanned and politically motivated, the transfer of 10,000 civil and public servants from Dublin was originally announced in a budget speech by former minister for finance Charlie McCreevy. The designation of 53 locations throughout the State for new public offices in 2003, which paid no attention to the government’s own spatial strategy, was designed to bolster Fianna Fáil’s support in the local elections of the following year. It failed in that objective. The project emerged as an intrinsic and lucrative aspect of our property bubble. In some localities, the suspicion of “jobs for the boys” through land rezoning and office building took root. Last year, when the Government finally suspended expenditure on new offices, its implementation group noted that the availability of advance accommodation in provincial areas had been a key driver of the programme.