NEWTON'S OPTIC:Staff at the Department of Agriculture, the Irish Land Commission and the Central Statistics Office have scuppered plans for their new office building in Portlaoise after learning that it would be near four electric pylons, writes NEWTON EMERSON.
There is no evidence that working near pylons is dangerous, especially if your working day only runs from 10am to 3pm with two hours for lunch. But the staff have signed a petition, bless them, so evidence is neither here nor there. The entire four-storey 21,000sq m building and its 770-space car park may now never be built.
This is obviously fantastic news for hard-pressed taxpayers, not least because some of the civil servants already decentralised to Portlaoise may end up losing their jobs. So what other irrational health fears could the Government encourage to get rid of surplus public sector workers?
Low-energy lightbulbs offer a targeted approach to cost-effective bureaucrat removal. This year alone, these completely harmless devices have featured in high-profile health scares involving migraines, seizures and mercury poisoning. Installing low-energy lightbulbs directly above unwanted civil servants should frighten them away while leaving nearby colleagues largely unaffected. To drive out an entire office floor or even shut down a small agency, electromagnetic hypersensitivity might prove more useful. Sufferers of this completely non-existent condition believe that they are adversely affected by wireless computer networks. Scientific studies show that it is all in their imagination but this only makes their suffering all the more imaginative.
Ministers wishing to exploit fears of electromagnetic hypersensitivity should make a high-pitched whining noise whenever they walk through their department. Ideally, this should be somewhat louder than the high-pitched whining noise made by their staff.
Tackling Ireland's estimated 850 quangos will prove more of a challenge. Most of these organisations are based in plush city centre buildings with no prospect of new pylons nearby. However, phone masts often have much the same deterrent effect. The Government could commission 850 dummy phone masts for a modest sum and place them directly outside every quango office. It is not certain if this will work but it is quite certain that nothing else will work so there is really very little to lose. The Poolbeg incinerator offers a chance to tackle public sector employment on a much grander scale. The incinerator will emit fewer toxic particles in a year than a single backyard bonfire emits in one night.
Fortunately, this is no consolation at all to the wilfully ignorant. The incinerator will also produce electricity for distribution via pylons to mobile phone masts broadcasting wireless computer networks. This has the potential to terrify thousands of civil servants across Dublin. If nothing else, it should finally kick-start decentralisation. But with the budget deficit growing larger by the day it may be necessary to go for the nuclear option. For 50 years the Sellafield nuclear facility has repeatedly leaked, broken down and caught fire without producing any measurable health impact whatsoever.Nevertheless, it is an article of faith among Irish paranoiacs that one dropped test tube will instantly irradiate the entire east coast. With the right encouragement, surplus civil servants from Dundalk to Wexford could run screaming from their offices, never to return. Better still, those fearing imminent death might even cash in their pensions.