Deferral of decentralisation shows shocking waste of project, says Burton

THE DISCLOSURE of Government plans to defer the decentralisation of over 5,000 public servants highlights the shocking waste of the entire decentralisation project, according to Labour Party deputy leader and finance spokeswoman, Joan Burton.

She was commenting on a report in yesterday’s Irish Times that plans to decentralise over 5,000 public servants have been deferred, while just 2,500 people have moved under the plan.

Ms Burton pointed out that bodies such as Fás and Enterprise Ireland had already decentralised advance groups but these will now be on their own as the main body of the workforce in both organisations will remain in Dublin.

“Once upon a time it was the sign of a brave new world and presented to the people as a wonderful reforming project. Now we know the truth to our cost. And that cost is simply enormous. Of all the waste that has been the hallmark of this Government this is really the worst,” said Ms Burton.

“We had the e-voting fiasco. We had the Bertie Bowl. We had the HSE and all its works . . . We had the cost overruns on the motorway programme. But decentralisation is by far the worst of Fianna Fáil vanity projects,” she added.

Ms Burton said the botched plan had undermined public administration at a crucial time. It had distracted public servants and created confusion and division. It had also diverted huge sums of public money for the purchase of land and the construction of offices that now lie idle or underused.

“Hence we have the farcical situation that advance parties of public servants are located in offices that will never be used as the main group will never arrive. Are they to be left there or brought back to Dublin? What is their function in these idle offices?

“I want to know, department by department, what has been spent on the purchase of land, the construction of offices, the leasing of offices for this failed project. I want a full special examination of the entire cost,” she said.

Ms Burton added that decentralisation was a political project from day one. It was announced in a budget speech to wild cheers from Fianna Fáil TDs. Target numbers and locations were announced to great local fanfare. But it was a doomed project from the start and it undermined the many individual, successful decentralisation exercises that had been delivered by earlier governments.

“Fianna Fáil made this a political rather than a proper planning exercise. That was its fundamental weakness . . . Voters next month should take this into account alongside all the other examples of Fianna Fáil waste and mismanagement that we have experienced these past 12 years,” she said.