The trade union Impact has claimed that the Government's decentralisation plans will see it paying out up to €65 million per year to retain specialist staff who do not wish to relocate under the programme but who will have no obvious role in Dublin.
The trade union has called for an independent investigation into the potential cost of the decentralisation programme.
Impact said that if the decentralisation went ahead as planned, the civil service would have to recruit 876 additional specialist staff for the new locations to replace personnel who opted to remain in Dublin. The trade union said that based on official Department of Finance figures on decentralisation applications, the take-up rate among specialist staff was just 15 per cent.
In a new report on decentralisation it said that on a conservative estimate, the cost to the taxpayer of retaining specialist staff in Dublin who did not wish to move with their current organisations would be between €51.1 and €65.6 million a year.
The trade union said the technical and professional civil servants who remained in Dublin would have "no obvious role".
"The 876 specialist posts, where no appropriately qualified or experienced staff have applied to be relocated with their organisations, include engineers, architects, probation officers, valuers, agricultural inspectors, archaeologists, legal experts, development specialists and many others.
"Their specialist qualifications and experience makes it difficult to replace them or reassign them to other civil service work as part of the voluntary decentralisation programme," the report states.
Impact said financial consultants Farrell Grant Sparks (FGS) had verified its analysis. In a letter in the report, FGS said it believed the sources of information and the information used in the preparation of the costs calculation were reasonable. FGS said it could not comment on the report last night.
Impact national secretary Louise O'Donnell last night called on members of the Dáil to seek an independent investigation on the costs of the decentralisation programme.
"The next Government waste scandal is unfolding before our eyes, but it is not too late to call a halt. It is now clear that organisations which depend heavily on specialist civil servants, who don't want to leave their homes and communities, cannot be decentralised without substantial on-going costs to the taxpayer, not to mention damage to services that will follow the loss of corporate knowledge and experience," she said.
Minister of State at the Office of Public Works Tom Parlon, who has responsibility for the decentralisation programme, said last night negotiations had only begun between Impact and the Department of Finance on the matters involved.
