Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I was about to come to that. I do not recommend Gordon Brown's approach, which is very different. According to Gordon Brown, 20,000 civil servants are to be moved out of London and, God help us, those who do not want to go will be made redundant. The civil servants will experience a 27% cut in salary and lose London allowances. We have a different way of doing things here, which I much prefer. It is an illustration of how fortunate public servants are to live in this country rather than across the water. I hope a constructive approach will be adopted.

As I pointed out in an article in The Irish Times, if one takes existing decentralisation programmes, which have worked perfectly smoothly, every hub and gateway has decentralised offices in it. It was perfectly clearly stated in the Fianna Fáil manifesto that decentralisation would be to substantial and well-placed towns which had difficulty attracting industry. Many other towns are mostly near national spatial strategy highways, or main routes. I hope decentralisation will proceed expeditiously. It is the key to the regeneration of certain parts of the country and to a better spatial balance.

Britain is, geographically, a less well-shaped country than Ireland, but Gordon Brown does not appear to be overly worried about the coherence of Government or that something infinitely precious will be disrupted. On the contrary, Senator McDowell's Labour friends across the water are going about decentralisation in a rather more brutal fashion than we are. Public servants should examine the way in which decentralisation is being planned here and consider how much more fortunate they are to live and work in a country which operates according to a proper principle of social partnership.