Impact Conference: Civil servants in specialist jobs angrily criticised the Government's decentralisation programme yesterday, claiming it would increase costs while reducing efficiency.
Members of the Civil Service division of Impact, the State's biggest public sector union, backed a call for industrial action in the event of staff being moved from specialist posts as a result of decentralisation.
At a conference of the union in Kilkenny, they also called for a "complete independent review" of the programme, claiming that it cannot be delivered in its current form.
Delegates also passed a motion requesting the Government to rethink the proposed relocation of the Probation and Welfare Service to Navan, Co Meath, given that the service is "already decentralised".
Oliver Fallon of the probation and welfare officers branch told the conference that the service had 12 offices countrywide and eight district offices in Dublin. The Government was proposing to move 100 Dublin-based welfare officers to Navan. Probation and welfare officers, he said, worked effectively in tackling the causes of offending behaviour.
"To move us to Navan means we are moved away from the clients that we serve, the people that we are working with." Much of their work, he said, was carried out among deprived and marginalised communities in Dublin.
"I am sure that we'll make a lot of money in travelling expenses going back and forth between Dublin and Navan, but it is not going to make us work more effectively."
"Unfortunately, because a Minister has decided we are to be decentralised, everybody we are working with is going to suffer."
Mr Fallon said it had been very difficult to get eight district offices established in Dublin in the first place. The whole process had taken "time, effort and money" because of the costs involved and the need to consult with local communities and explain what the service was about. As a consequence of the decentralisation programme, the Government had "suddenly decided" that these local offices were to be closed.
Another delegate, Jerry Heskin of the agriculture branch, said the decentralisation programme amounted to "bartering for votes". Referring to fears that specialist civil servants will be moved to unsuitable jobs, he asked: "Can you imagine Roy Keane representing Ireland at cricket?
"Do you get a painter to put in your windows? Do you get a plumber to do your carpentry work? This is what it's going to amount to - we'll be general jobbers.
"In Europe there's specialisation, but we're going backwards. We'll be gravediggers, we'll be every bloody thing bar what we're supposed to be, which is good civil servants," he said.
He claimed Minister of State for Finance Tom Parlon, who addressed the conference on Wednesday evening, did not have "a bloody clue", and unless civil servants went public and showed where the minister was wrong, they would be "pushed left, right and centre".
