Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

As far as I am aware, all parties in the House are in favour of a rational planned programme of decentralisation. Deputies on all sides of the House privately concede that the plan announced in 2003 by the then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, is a shambles, is unworkable, is doing permanent damage to the cohesion of governance and is causing serious unjustifiable disruption to families who have long put down roots in this city.

Why has a voluntary programme of decentralisation, announced admittedly off the top of the head and for political reasons, turned into a compulsory programme of relocation of civil servants and public servants working for agencies? In some agencies, nobody is offering to relocate. In FÁS six people out of 400 are offering to relocate. Specialist agencies will lose the undoubted skills accumulated over the years. Permanent damage will be done to the corporate memory in the Civil Service. We know that a parallel Civil Service will be developed at enormous cost — we do not know how much. In the words of my colleague, Deputy Burton, for the more than 5,000 who are determined not to move, they will end up being whitewalled in this city with somebody scrounging around to try to find work for them to do. That is utterly unjustifiable. However, what is most unjustifiable——

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