Madam, - Surely Charlie McCreevy's decentralisation plan is a stroke too far, even for our deluded, disillusioned and defeated electorate.
It is significant that the respected Senator Martin Mansergh was sent forth as Government spokesperson in an apparent attempt to cast a semblance of credibility and responsible governance over what is a cynical, ill-considered measure, with the potential to damage the very fabric of Irish society.
Senator Mansergh was patently uncomfortable on RTÉ's Prime Time as he sought to gloss over the more irresponsible aspects of the plan. His treatise in your edition of Saturday 28th February was not so much an argument for the brand of decentralisation being proposed but rather an attempt to demonise any civil servant who might be seen to stand in the way of the emperor's new suit of clothes.
He failed to recognise the irony in referring to the abolition of An Foras Forbartha in 1986, an act now seen by many as having done irreparable damage to Ireland's environment. Is the Cabinet seriously contemplating abolishing all the offending departments, if the civil servants do not capitulate?
Decentralisation as proposed is going to set ignored, peripheral communities against each other and against our civil servants, a body of people who have largely served this country loyally and well.
The hopes of desperate communities have been raised, but their expectations will not be met. They will have empty office buildings rather like the glasshouses of folly that peppered the landscape of the West in the earlier, more innocent days of the State - intended for tomatoes, but sheltering sows and bonhams instead.
By all means let us have real, functionally effective decentralisation, involving an appropriate level of devolution of power - especially financial power.
The process of centralisation, a legacy of colonisation, perpetuated by successive governments over the past 50 or more years was very wrong and destructive to local democracy, but while it may not take another 50 years to undo, this will not be achieved within the term of office of one or even three governments. A job well done needs its own time. Dublin is no longer a city, or even a sprawl; it has become a self-consuming vortex as a direct result of the failure of our elected representatives to decentralise and devolve.
Let us prepare a strategy to give back power, authority and finance to our emasculated local authorities and finally commit ourselves to regionalisation.Devolving power to regional administrations over a realistic time-frame would enable the regions to achieve the necessary critical mass to stimulate the growth denied to so much of Ireland.
Dispersing civil servants across the landscape, is not decentralisation. Real decentralisation is indeed a challenge for us all, but this particular exercise in stroke politics suggest that this Government is unlikely to lead us in the task, unless wiser counsel prevails at the Cabinet table. - Yours, etc.,
TERRY O'REGAN, Maple Lawn, Ballincollig, Co Cork.
Madam, - In the 1950s thousands of Irish men and women were forced, through economic necessity, to "de-centralise" to Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, etc. My father was one of them. He had no choice. There was no Government support for women and children left behind; fathers became strangers; no talk then of promotional guarantees.
Dublin is smothering. The West and Mid-West are stagnating. I have never been a FF supporter, but on this issue I believe Mr Ahern and Mr McCreevy are right. This time the public sector must take the pain; there simply is no other choice. - Yours, etc.,
OLIVER GINTY, Nephin Road, Dublin 7.