The chief executive of the state agency the Western Development Commission (WDC), Liam Scollan, is to resign. He said he was leaving the job for personal reasons but he has also criticised certain Government policies, saying they were "wrong for the western region".
The resignation comes at a time when the WDC is known to be unhappy with the Government's response to its recent "State of the West" report, which called for urgent action to improve infrastructure and to put more priority on western issues.
The board of the commission met on October 11th and decided to seek a meeting with the Taoiseach "as a matter of urgency". The board is believed to be alarmed because the Minister responsible for western development, ╔amon ╙ Cuiv, has indicated that a £20 million Clar programme for depopulated areas will be the main Government response to the State of the West report.
Mr Scollan, who has been chief executive for four years, stressed that he was not leaving because of this. He said that if he were leaving because of frustration he would have left some years ago at times of greater difficulty, such as when the commission was operating initially without any legislation and when there was a three-year delay in getting the Western Investment Fund started.
Mr Scollan said he was not disillusioned but he accepted that he was concerned with "the slow pace of change" and said that while the WDC had come up with all the right policies, there was "an implementation deficit".
This slow pace was "inevitable to an extent within the public sector", but what the west needed was for development to be accelerated.
He felt that after four years, the commission had reached a point where he could leave because its position had been consolidated and its credibility in policy-making was established. Staff numbers had also been increased after some delays. He said he had never intended to be "a career public servant".
In a statement announcing his resignation, Mr Scollan is critical of Government policies. He says that "sometimes it appeared effective to shrug off the importance of policy-making and dwell solely on immediate action" but that the actions taken on the ground were driven by policies and if the policies were wrong or inadequate, then actions would be wrong or inadequate as well.
"Certain policies driving actions in relation to road investment are wrong for the western region. The same can be said for telecommunications and many other policies which the WDC has analysed, reshaped and proposed back to government, complete with implementation plans," the statement said.
It goes on to warn that if policy recommendations in the State of the West report are not implemented "they will be out of date in less than three years and an opportunity for action driven by clearly-defined strategy and support will have passed us by".
It adds that there are no strong regional structures to implement WDC recommendations at regional level and he believes this is a mistake.
"It is customary to shrug off new structures when the reality is that we are afraid to replace the plethora of ones that are not working sufficiently well." Mr Scollan states that in the absence of such structures, he hopes the Government will put in place the high-level working groups recommended in the State of the West report to focus on roads and power/telecommunications.
The chairman of the WDC, Mr Seβn Tighe, said the resignation was "a tremendous loss". He said he knew that Mr Scollan was "frustrated on many occasions by the very slow pace at which real change can be achieved".
Mr Tighe said the board was disappointed that recommendations in the State of the West report had not yet been taken on board by the Government. He did not view Mr ╙ Cuiv's Clar programme as implementation of the report.
In a letter to the Taoiseach, the board states: "The WDC feels that responses received from various ministers do not amount to a commitment to implement key recommendations in the State of the West".
The report, published in July, stated that the gap between the east and west of the State was continuing to widen and that measures in the National Development Plan were insufficient.
It recommended that two high-level working groups, comprising the most senior civil servants, be established to focus on roads and power/telecommunications to ensure the report was implemented. It said these should be set up by September, and produce an interim report by December and a costed development schedule in February. It also recommended an investment programme for towns. No move has been made to set up these groups.
Mr Scollan, a native of Leitrim, worked for many years in economic development in the UK. He said leaving the WDC was "a personal and family decision - a desire to do something else with my life at this point". He will be self-employed but will be working part time with the Newman Institute in Ballina, which he described as an exciting project concerned with bringing a Christian dimension to education and development.