Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)

I join with other colleagues in calling for a debate on decentralisation. I have sympathy with civil and public servants who find themselves in the position of having to move location in order to further their career, but we now have the principle of benchmarking and in the private sector it is not unusual for people to have to move to further their careers or to remain with the same company.

It is important we do not lose sight of what decentralisation is about. It is about decluttering this city and overcoming some of its infrastructural problems, and building rural Ireland in line with the commitment of this Government in the national spatial strategy——