Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Will the Taoiseach take this opportunity to clarify for thousands of people in the employ of the public sector where they stand in the decentralisation project? Thousands of people do not know if they are coming or going or when they will go if it is proposed to persist with this plan.

The agencies, numbering at least 2,500 people, have been removed from it, and of the 1,700 specialist staff in the Civil Service, 20% say they are willing to go under certain circumstances. If we add those two figures together, they amount to more than 4,000 of the original 10,300. Why is the Government determined to persist with a programme that from day one was badly thought out, ill-judged and purely for political window dressing at the time? This is not decentralisation, it is dispersal of civil servants and it is damaging to the efficiency of Government and undermines the national spatial strategy.

The extra costs involved will only be calculated in the years ahead. It will be necessary to employ a parallel Civil Service. If 20% of specialist staff say they are prepared to go in certain circumstances, the same will happen as has happened in the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, which is recruiting new specialist personnel. The implications of losing those specialist skills are unthinkable for governance.

Has the time not come to state clearly Government policy in this area? People have put down roots in Dublin, their families are in education and their spouses are working. This is not working and the Taoiseach knows it. If the agencies have been removed from the plan and the specialist staff will not go, is it not time to go back to the drawing board for a complete review of the idea?

See this speech in context