Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When we were discussing this matter with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, I put forward the idea that we already have a lot of decentralised Civil Service offices around the country, from Buncrana to Na Forbacha, all the way around. The reality is that I am not sure whether all those buildings are fully utilised. I asked that question of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and received a reply. He was able to tell me how many decentralised offices the State owns and rents throughout the country. He could not tell me the utilisation level of any of those offices. If one is in the public service, it is better to work from a public service office. Someone might be in charge of that office so a person working there would have oversight, secure lines and the whole lot.

I know for a fact that an extension was built to the office in Na Forbacha. A translation section was to go in there and provide translation to all the public service offices around the country, semi-State and Civil Service, that needed translation done centrally and to a quality, rather than using terrible Google Translate answers. That was cancelled in 2012, for whatever reason. I know that office space is there. There is nothing to stop the Civil Service saying that 20, 30 or 40 civil servants who work in different Departments, the Department of Education or whatever, on condition they work through Irish, could be located in Na Forbacha on a co-location basis. The senior official there would look after the ordinary, day-to-day things like administration and so on. It seems to me that those kinds of locations are already available. It is amazing that the Office of Public Works, OPW, does not know how many spaces are available for this kind of choice working.

I also think it would stop the silo effect which is a terrible problem in the Civil Service. One would think that the 15 or 16 Departments were competing companies rather than a Civil Service serving one Government. Everyone in the Government sits and works together but, when one starts working downwards, they fight each other as if they were all protecting their own little empires. I just bounce that idea at the Minister of State because sometimes the simple and ready-made solutions are overlooked. There are Civil Service offices in every county around the country. That is one idea.

I will ask just one other question because I understand that time is short. At the end of October, only 50% of the capital expenditure of the Department of Rural and Community Development had been spent. That is crazy. Every year, we get the same thing and it all happens in the final two months of the year. That is bad practice. Many schemes that were announced for 2021 have not had their allocations of funding approved yet. I got a reply to a parliamentary question to that effect. Will the Minister of State get up-to-date figures, subhead by subhead, of the capital allocation and expenditure to date, now that we are halfway through November? The Department always seems reticent to show the figures but I have a suspicion that there will probably be an overspend on the LEADER programme but a significant underspend on some other programmes. I would hate to see anything going back to the Exchequer. It is hard enough to extract it, as the Minister of State will soon find out, without having to give it back at the end of the year, or to carry it forward, or to be making prepayments to local authorities, which I also disapprove of because sometimes they do not spend it for years.