Sir, - Your Editorial of February 25th accurately sums up the mess in which the Government currently finds itself over its tactics on regionalisation. The embarrassing effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the European Commission in this matter is indeed, as you state, "in flitters".
However, successive governments over the past decade or more (not to mention that intractable fortress, the Department of Finance) must share some of the blame for what now is almost a crisis. They all got plenty of warnings. In 1985, Muintir na Tire commissioned a study (headed by such champions of devolution as Tom Barrington, Dr Tom Walsh, Prof Basil Chubb and Thomas Roseingrave) on the implications of local government reform. Commencing on the structures, the report, Towards a New Democracy?, says that the basic role of a regional body "is integration horizontally and vertically for regional development of all governmental services operating within the region for regional planning and review, priority setting and major resource allocations." If only part of this was implemented, the Taoiseach would not now have to be inventing artificial regions to sustain political survival.
A final sentence in the conclusion of the report makes prophetic reading visa-vis your paper's comments: "The failure or fritting away of the current moves [there were brave words about devolution even in 1985] towards local government reform would be a sorry ending for the brave departure to a new democracy."
For our country's sake, let us fervently hope that the Government's "departure" to pseudo-regionalisation will not have a sorry ending. - Yours, etc., Jim Quigley,
National President, Muintir na Tire, North Street, Swords, Co Dublin.