Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I welcome the Minister for Finance and the Minister of State at the Department of Finance to the House. It is a rare honour.

The decision by the former Minister for Finance, Mr. McCreevy, to decentralise thousands of civil servants, announced in his budget a number of years ago, was a political decision that has caused chaos in the lives of thousands of civil and public servants and their families. That was the legacy of the great free marketeer we had as Minister for Finance for many years. Essentially, it was a question of putting profit before people, without much consideration as to their lives, and making a contribution towards winning the next general election for Fianna Fáil. We see how he has gone on to Europe to introduce the services directive. He has had more opposition there than he had in this country. Perhaps that is a reflection on all of us.

My point is about the 400 FÁS employees in Dublin, only six of whom have opted to transfer to Birr, County Offaly. Interestingly enough, this is the constituency in which both the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, and the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, are both representatives. They have special responsibility for decentralisation.

The key to the issue is that decentralisation was presented and promoted as a voluntary transaction and agreement by the people concerned. However, every FÁS employee who seeks a promotional post must first sign a contract to move to Birr, which immediately renders the transfer compulsory. A gun is being placed to the head of every person who feels they can take a step up the ladder.

FÁS is the only State agency using promotional posts to compel people to decentralise. That is the bottom line. It is not the Civil Service; it is a public service agency. The members of FÁS are not civil servants; they are public servants. It is the one agency using the promotional posts mechanism to compel people to transfer to Birr.

The Labour Court intervened in this matter and decided in favour of the FÁS employees. However, the Department of Finance will not allow FÁS to implement the Labour Court recommendations. The only explanation I have for this is that the Minister and Minister of State responsible for decentralisation have Birr in their constituency and, come hell or high water, they are determined to ensure that the people from FÁS transfer there as soon as possible, perhaps before the next general election. This is a disgrace and an insult to many of the public and civil servants who have served the State so well over the years. They must now uproot themselves and their families and live in an area to which they specifically decided they did not want to transfer, at whatever stage in their career they may be.

Decentralisation is good. I am in favour of it. However, enforced decentralisation is anti-democratic. It is more akin to a form of dictatorship if people have a gun to their heads in terms of whether they will decentralise. That is not a voluntary system. This sector of the State agency FÁS is at the core of this compulsory transfer mechanism now being used. Will the Minister for Finance tell the House why, if the Labour Court could come to an agreement and decide in favour of the FÁS employees, he and his Department were not prepared to accept the decision and act accordingly?

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