Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, it is not. When one is talking about connected, integrated government and the myriad other meetings which officials have to attend, including the Secretary General, I think the last Government thought it had discovered a manner of governing which the Romans discovered was a major error when they tried to disperse government around their empire, which subsequently collapsed. It was a mistake.

One cannot have senior officials in Departments at a distance from each other to such an extent that people have to spend an hour on the road travelling one way and an hour on the road travelling another. It is a waste of time and is not in the public interest. I see it in the context of myriad different meetings which take place of officials in different Cabinet sub-committees where officials attend with particular areas of specialties across different Departments.

There is a very good case for certain Government services being decentralised. For example, the move to Galway on the financial side was a very workable proposition. Senior officials need to be in the centre where they can interact easily with colleagues. Business can be conducted by telephone and other ways, but where there is a need for meetings and for people to sit around a table collectively it means an unnecessary amount of time is wasted by people travelling backwards and forwards.