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.
The political determination and refusal to compromise that sustained the flawed decentralisation exercise was reminiscent of the failed electronic voting project. But it has been far more expensive for taxpayers. In spite of publicly expressed concerns over a loss of corporate knowledge if the headquarters of eight government departments were transferred out of Dublin, the acquisition of properties went ahead.
We now have a situation where groups of employees from State agencies and Government departments have been sent to new offices in provincial towns that are much too large for them, while their colleagues remain in Dublin. Had that not happened, the Government was faced with promoting new management for those centres while continuing to pay senior officials who refused to move from Dublin. It was – and is – an unholy mess. And it will cost significant sums of money for years to come. Carefully balanced and properly planned, decentralisation projects can offer positive benefits. But this exercise reflected much of what was wrong under the leadership of Bertie Ahern.