OPINION:Senior civil servants in different departments need to interact closely with each other, not least to overcome bureaucratic bungling, writes FRANK McDONALD
MINISTER FOR Transport Leo Varadkar was quite right last week when he branded the so-called decentralisation programme “deranged”. It was a word I had first used not long after this mad plan was unveiled in December 2003 by squandermaniac Charlie McCreevy, then minister for finance, whose code for it was “the Big D”.
Varadkar’s press release was almost gleeful in announcing decisive action involving agencies under the wing of his department. Thus, the National Roads Authority “will not move to Ballinasloe”, Fáilte Ireland “will not move to Mallow”, and the CIÉ group “will not move to Mitchelstown”, etc.
But it wasn’t just State agencies or the “back-office” functions of Government departments that were to be relocated out of Dublin. No less than 10,300 public servants, including the headquarters of eight departments, were to be dispersed from the capital to 53 locations in every other county in the State.
Agriculture was to go to Portlaoise; Arts, Sport and Tourism to Killarney; Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to Cavan; Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to Knock Airport; Defence to Newbridge; Education to Mullingar; Environment to Wexford; and Social and Family Affairs to Drogheda.
As James Nix and myself wrote in Chaos at the Crossroads (2005), the scale of this dispersal was so staggering that it led Dr Ed Walsh, former president of the University of Limerick, to remark that if the Government planned to move so many departments, “why not move all of them?” – to a new capital.
After McCreevy dropped his “decentralisation” bombshell, former taoiseach John Bruton asked: “What is a capital city, and why does every country have one?” The answer is simple. “Capital cities . . . exist to make policy at national level . . . because there are inherent economies of scale in making policy in one place.”
Not only that. Senior civil servants in different departments need to interact with each other, not least to overcome the bureaucratic trench warfare that seems to be endemic in this State. Under the McCreevy plan, they would have been racking up endless mileage expenses travelling to and from Dublin and other centres.
According to former minister for the environment Martin Cullen, the 2003 plan was hatched by “Bertie [Ahern], McCreevy, Mary Harney and myself”. Theirs was the most audacious smash-and-grab raid in the history of the State, whereby thousands of public servants were to be moved around like pawns on a giant chessboard.
The clientelism at the root of it was dramatised by then PD minister of state Tom Parlon, who had “Parlon delivers!” billboards put up all over his Laois-Offaly constituency on the morning after, hailing the hundreds of jobs that would be delivered by the Department of Agriculture moving to Portlaoise, and Fás moving to Birr.
Mary Coughlan, then minister for social and family affairs, let the cat out of the bag when she said the aim was to “decentralise” public bodies to locations where an influx of civil servants would have the greatest impact – smaller towns such as Ballina and Ballyshannon, rather than, say, Galway, where they would barely be noticed.
The clear winners would be local auctioneers, estate agents, builders, shopkeepers, publicans, car dealers, property developers and landowners with sites for sale – all of whom would stand to gain from having a clutch of well-paid civil servants moving into their area. The only casualty was the public interest.
The “decentralisation” programme came just a year after the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats coalition adopted Ireland’s first National Spatial Strategy (NSS), with its identification of nine “gateways” and nine “hubs” as development growth poles. This was supposed to be the cornerstone of government policy.
In December 2003, Cullen spuriously claimed that “now we see real life being given to it [the NSS] right throughout the country. It hits all of the hubs, all of the major areas that have been identified, the major county towns”. In fact, only a quarter of the total number was targeted for NSS gateways or hubs.
Late former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald branded the programme “a most flagrant example of the ‘stroke mentality’ which afflicts so much of Irish politics”, and said “the blatant hypocrisy of ministers asserting that this decision has ‘taken into account’ the National Spatial Strategy” would further contribute to people’s cynicism over politics.
Not surprisingly, there was resistance. The Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants expressed its “anger and dismay” over Tom Parlon’s notorious billboards because they implied civil servants were the property of the FF-PD government, “to be distributed as trophies in advance of local elections” in 2004.
The impact of the pushing through of what the association called “the most fundamental change in civil and public administration since the foundation of the State” on so many lives – some 60,000, it estimated, including spouses, children and other family members – did not matter.
In the end, only 3,200 public servants were “decentralised” to 37 locations. The only Civil Service department headquarters now located outside Dublin (in Trim, Co Meath) is that of the Office of Public Works, which had responsibility for implementing the programme.
Built for €32 million on a site that cost €5.5 million, this curious circular building is occupied by some 230 staff – some of whom are conveyed to Trim every weekday morning at 8am by bus from Dublin Castle and dropped back at 5pm in the evening. Many of the rest drive up and down as “contraflow” commuters.
The latest set of figures (December 2009) show that a total of €338 million was spent on the acquisition and development of sites under the programme, including €7 million for rented accommodation. Some €44 million was spent purchasing 12 sites where “decentralisation” is not being progressed.
The Government was right to halt this madness. It cannot undo the damage that’s been done, but at least its decision means the headquarters of every department and most State agencies will remain in the capital – enabling, at least in theory, policy to be made more coherently in these difficult times.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor