Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

From reading the motion, it is clear that there is doubt in the proposers' minds as to the feasibility of the project or the timescale within which it will be implemented. The Minister of State's contribution clearly indicates the absence of factual information regarding what is actually happening. In discussing decentralisation in this instance, we are talking about nothing more than relocation. That is the bald fact underlying this rushed scheme. Every public representative in the country welcomes decentralisation and the idea behind it. However, with the concept of decentralisation must come power.

If I could offer one example of a Department and Minister that have gone contrary to the beliefs I have outlined, it would be the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and its Minister. Let us consider the Minister's record. I am sure there are other Ministers to whom I could refer but I will concentrate on the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government because I was a member of a local authority. The Minister has clawed back power to his Department at every opportunity. He has removed power from local authority members with responsibility for waste management. He has also taken back power in the area of planning with the issuing of his recent guidelines, which were completely irrelevant and had no impact as regards solving the problem some Fianna Fáil Ministers and Ministers of State stated they had resolved in recent times. My party has a concept of decentralisation, in this instance, as meaning nothing more than the relocation of civil servants out of Dublin while retaining power here. We cannot accept that the Government's concept of decentralisation is real or genuine.

Another parallel exists in terms of the spatial strategy. What has happened in this regard? There is no relationship or link to the policy the Government has espoused in the past couple of years in respect of the spatial strategy. Under the strategy, we were supposed to develop hubs and gateways throughout the country and everybody embraced the concept. What has happened? The strategy has been scrapped. Will the Minister of State indicate whether anything positive, other than a coincidental allocation of some semi-State office or service to one of the proposed hubs or gateways, has happened in respect of the spatial strategy? I would go so far as to say that such allocations were even accidental.