Decentralisation - Just Plain Wrong

The Government's Decentralisation plan is, sadly and despite my hopes and expectations, continuing apace and it now looks like it is pretty much unstoppable. The policy has been criticised in a half hearted manner by the opposition but it is only the execution of the policy and not the actual policy itself that they have addressed.

Decentralisation is wrong for several reasons -

Efficiency: At present most Civil Servants are based in Dublin - our capital city. This means that whenever they wish to have meetings, seminars, conferences etc they can do so with ease and at no cost to the taxpayer. Most are within the "canal zone" and can walk from one office to the other. After decentralisation meetings will require day trips or overnight ventures to the capital - the expenses will be flowing and the timewasting will be massive

Financially: The Government (and in particular the Minister responsible for implementing this policy, Tom Parlon) have repeatedly claimed that Decentralisation will be "financially neutral" stating that the money made from selling off the valuable properties in Dublin will offset the cost of buying and fitting out new properties and compensating the civil service for the uprooting of their lives. This, of course, is rubbish. It is highly unlikely that the building costs alone will be "neutral" but even if they were the costs of moving the Civil Servants will be massive and they are ignoring all of the ancillary costs such as training of new staff for each section (over 90% are refusing to move!), the sourcing and setting up of new IT and communications systems, the sourcing of new suppliers etc. This will cost the taxpayer a fortune.

Loss of Expertise: The newspapers are regularly carrying stories about the numbers of Civil Servants who are, quite rightly, refusing to be moved from Dublin to the various rural towns that they have been directed to. The "refusniks" often make up the vast majority of an Agency - as high as 95%. Since the government have promised not to force anyone to move against their will all of these people have to be reassigned to different jobs within the Civil Service and all of their positions have to be given to people who are willing to live in rural towns. The result of this will be an enormous loss of experience within every section of the Public Service. If a commercial enterprise was to try this it would almost certainly go out of business. It's madness and hugely inefficient.

Environmentally: No mention has been made of the environmental impact of all this pointless movement and unnecessary building work. At present most interdepartmental meetings or inter agency meetings can take place with no waste of resources at all as they are, for the most part, within walking distance of each other. With the new plan the additional car journeys will pump even more CO2 in the atmosphere - and we are already about to have to pay millions in fines for our breaches of the Kyoto Treaty. Talk of video conferencing is all hot air - that will be just an excuse to spend more money on technology that won't be used. People need to have meetings with each other face to face.

Commercially: There are a large number of businesses (both big and small) that have formed in Dublin to provide goods and services to Government clients. These businesses were created following normal economic principles whereby needs were filled by companies that developed close to their major clients - a symbiotic relationship. As a result of decentralisation these businesses will suddenly lose massive portions of their business or be faced with having to make huge polluting journeys to meet their clients and deliver goods. To pay for these trips they will have to raise their prices - and guess who'll get to foot that bill.

Human Decency: The decision makers seemed to forget that human beings tend to group together in units known as families. The result of this is that if one member of that family agrees to move then all the others have to come with them. The problem with this is that spouses have an awful habit of having their own jobs and lives that might not want to be moved - children might be in school and happy with where they are. Sadly none of this occurred to those in power.


This policy is just wrong. It should be stopped. I had hoped that it would just fail through incompetency but it looks like it is going to be forced through. If only we had an opposition they might try to stop it. But sadly we don't.