Nearly 350 civil servants are to get a €2,250 lump sum and six extra days' holidays to leave State offices in Abbotstown, once intended to be the home for the National Stadium, for new offices in Backweston, Co Kildare, 10 miles away.
The Department of Agriculture and Food and State Laboratory officials were awarded the package under the Civil Service Arbitration Board despite a 22-year-old ban on "disturbance money" for civil servants.
The Department of Agriculture and Food will move 250 researchers, veterinarians, laboratory technicians, and other experts from its offices in Abbotstown to Backweston, near Celbridge, by early 2006.
The State Laboratory, which provides technical help to all Government departments and State agencies, has already moved its 100 staff from Abbotstown to the new office.
A one-off payment of €2,250 is for any staff member who has farther to travel to work or who incurs additional costs as a result of the relocation. In addition, each of them will get two days' extra leave for the year in which they make the transfer and for each of the following two years.
Faced with ever-mounting demands, the Government decided in 1983 to ban "disturbance money" for civil and public servants, though a number of extraordinary payments have been made since then.
"Such cases concerned exceptional situations involving moves of large distances for the staff or where there were aspects of disruption other than the relocation itself such as loss of facilities, or significant organisational change," said the conciliation's board report lodged this week in the Oireachtas.
The joint claim for compensation was lodged by IMPACT, the Veterinary Officers' Association (VOA), the Civil and Public Service Union, the Public Service Executive Union and the Federated Union of Government Employees (FUGE).
