The decentralisation plans will do little for balanced regional developmentand make a nonsense of the National Spatial Strategy, writes PeterClinch
There are three questions to consider when assessing the merits of Government plans to decentralise the civil service. To what extent does this policy contribute to the goal of achieving more balanced regional development? What are the costs and benefits associated with moving more than 10,000 people out of Dublin and spreading them around the country? Will decentralisation improve or disimprove the functioning of the public service?
Regional policy attempts to change the distribution of population and economic activity from that which would occur naturally. This can be justified in order to achieve certain social goals, such as maintaining population in rural areas and reducing congestion and other negative effects resulting from excessive growth in large urban areas.
The principal concern has been the rapid growth of population and economic activity in the Greater Dublin Area in comparison with the rest of Ireland.
It is often stated that Dublin's growth in the 1990s has been "excessive" but Ireland is a small region of the EU, and Dublin is a small city by international standards. Dublin's growth rate has not been exceptional. For example, 50 of the 280 US metropolitan areas grew faster than Greater Dublin in the 1990s.
However, it is clear to anyone living in Dublin that there have been costs associated with the rapid growth of the city in the form of traffic congestion, rising house prices, urban sprawl, and long commutes. But, given that the growth of the city is not exceptional, perhaps we should be asking why we seem to fail to anticipate such problems and deliver on the necessary infrastructure to alleviate them. When the plans for the Luas were announced, despite the ads, I doubt many people really thought they'd be catching a tram home this Christmas Eve.
Nevertheless, there is still merit in improving the "balance" of regional development in order to promote economic growth and population stability in other parts of the country.
However, it is difficult to point to many instances where Irish regional policy has been effective. Even Cork and Galway have difficulty competing with Dublin.
The forces that lead to agglomeration are strong - modern firms like to cluster geographically to be near deep labour markets and sub-supply sectors. The Dublin experience demonstrates the importance of scale and emphasises that agglomeration and economic vitality are related to size.
Therefore, for regional policy to be successful, a small number of places would need to be chosen that would have some chance of competing with Dublin. These "growth centres" would have minimum thresholds with regard to population, communications, air, road and rail access, energy, waste and waste-water infrastructure that would provide the critical mass necessary to attract inward investment.
In addition, once these centres were picked, government investment should have flowed into these centres.
This was the objective behind the National Spatial Strategy published just over a year ago. Cynics at the time referred to it as "Buchanan for slow learners", after the report published in the late 1960s subsequently ignored by government. The Buchanan report had presented a sensible strategy to promote three national growth centres and six regional growth centres.
In contrast, the NSS recommended the promotion of a network of 22 gateways and hubs - far too many to develop minimum critical mass and to achieve significant multiplier effects. Excluding Dublin, the NSS included 21 hubs and gateways for a population of just 2.5 million people. However, if this was spreading the jam too thin, the Government's decentralisation policy is spreading the jam so thin, people will barely taste it.
At the first opportunity the Government had to promote the NSS, it decided to put only a quarter of civil service jobs in NSS gateways and hubs. In addition, there seem to have been no clear criteria for the choice of host locations. By spreading the civil service across 53 different locations, there will be no contribution to building critical mass, limited multiplier effects, and, in fact, the plan may result in areas becoming far too dependent on their civil service office for employment.
The question that arises for regional policy is how much national economic growth should be traded off for a better "regional balance"? By this yardstick the decentralisation policy is flawed. It will do little to promote a better regional balance. There will be small gains for the 53 host areas chosen, but a larger loss to the nation through reduced economic growth.
A rationale for decentralising the civil service is to reduce the pressures on Dublin's infrastructure. However, there is the potential for significant costs, both financial and environmental, to result from relocating more than 10,000 people plus their families. Significant investment in infrastructure in the proposed host areas will be required. Houses, schools, waste and waste-water treatment facilities will need to be upgraded and the planning system will face challenges to avoid inappropriate settlement patterns emerging.
While such matters were considered in the NSS, they seem to have been ignored in the current decentralisation policy. Given our seeming inability to deliver infrastructure projects on time and to budget, one has to doubt whether the necessary improvements are likely to be forthcoming in the time horizon set out by the Government.
Finally, there are concerns about the effect of decentralisation on the effectiveness of the public service. There may be a rationale for relocating technical parts of the civil service but there are serious economies of scale and efficiencies in having the policy-making parts of the civil service located in the same place.
In the aftermath of September 11th, in the private sector, there was the view that many meetings could be replaced by e-mail, conference calls or video-conferencing. However, serious decisions are made at face-to-face meetings, where one can get a feel for the mood of the group, and very quickly the private sector returned to travelling to meetings. Decentralising the policy-making parts of the civil service will be a blow to integrated government where concerns cross departmental lines.
There will be quite significant costs in terms of lost time due to travelling, including to Brussels where competition for resources with the accession countries is intensifying. A further concern is that the most ambitious civil servants will choose to stay in Dublin and a two-tier public service will emerge with the Dublin-based departments benefiting at the expense of others.
Whether it be inappropriate decentralisation, political meddling in planning matters, the inevitable tinkering with health reforms and the Hanley report, the national interest is continually being sacrificed due to politicians being swayed by local political interests.
The inappropriate policymaking that results from our political system will result in a stifling of the national economy. While those areas celebrating getting their bit of the civil service, be it in "Parlon country" or wherever, may get a short-term gain, they will suffer from the reduced performance of the national economy in the long term.
Peter Clinch is Professor of Planning and Jean Monnet Professor of European Environmental Policy at UCD. He is co-author (with Frank Convery and Brendan Walsh) of After the Celtic Tiger (O'Brien Press)