Jim Higgins (Fine Gael)

I join with the other speakers in supporting the call for a long debate on what happened on Saturday. I commend Senator Maurice Hayes, in particular. When people were going in different directions because of the short timespan, he wrote an excellent article on his analysis of what happened and where we should be going. He will make a valuable input to the debate in this House.

On the issue of decentralisation, figures published at the weekend show conclusively that this proposal is dead and buried. It was supposed to happen in 2007. It was a fait accompli that 10,000 civil servants would be transferred to the regions. It is obvious that the uptake is so negligible that we can either erect the tombstone or try to revitalise and regenerate the programme. I want to see the programme go ahead but it is obvious this will not happen. It was a botched, "back of the brown envelope" job which was not properly conceived. There was no dialogue on the issue and we need to have a debate on it.