Customer services face serious disruption when jobs in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment are decentralised to Carlow, officials have warned.
Services provided by the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs, for example, are likely to be "radically" reduced during the move, according to the Department's decentralisation implementation plan.
The plan also foresees major problems for the Department's redundancy payments and insolvency payments sections, arising from the decision to relocate them. Officials in the two sections believe they will be unable to complete the move to Carlow until April 2007, several months after the Government had hoped to complete its decentralisation programme.
Any attempt to move the sections early to establish "a physical presence in Carlow" would do "severe damage", the plan warns.
Nearly 300 Department posts would move to Carlow under the Government's programme. Its HQ would remain in Dublin.
The 93-page implementation plan, provided on request to The Irish Times, says the Department is satisfied that the relocation programme is achievable and will have no adverse impact on its people and business in the long term. But in a section-by-section analysis a range of problems is highlighted.
A chapter on the redundancy payments section, for example, says only one of its 30 staff is interested in moving to Carlow.
The move, says the plan, will inevitably result in degradation of customer service in the short-term, and possibly even in the longer term. Experienced staff will have to be replaced by newcomers, and this "will be compounded with the loss of knowledge of the considerable body of redundancy legislation".
"With this severe reduction in experience, it will be difficult to ensure the continuation of the present high level of customer service, which has been the hallmark of \ redundancy section in recent times," the plan says.
As a result of new procedures, it states, the waiting time for employers' rebate claims has been cut from 26 weeks in the first half of 2002 to nine weeks by the end of last year.
"The actual damage caused by a hasty move to Carlow could be a lot worse than reversing the recent improvements," it says.
The redundancy payments section is based in Davitt House in Dublin, in the same building as other units with which it shares a close relationship.
These include the Employment Appeals Tribunal as well as the Department's finance, IT and personnel units.
The value of "walk-in" contacts between the units is highlighted in the plan. "While telephone and email contact will continue to be available, this is not as satisfactory or as effective as personal contact."
The insolvency payments section faces similar problems, the plan suggests. It proposes strategies to deal with the potential difficulties, such as the provision of high quality training courses for new staff.
In a separate chapter the plan outlines serious issues facing the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs which faces "a virtual 100 per cent turnover of staff" as a result of the move to Carlow. This means "an acquired fund of knowledge, experience and expertise will be lost", which "can only be acquired over time, possibly years".
The office may have to take a pragmatic decision to revert to a policy of "reactive enforcement" of legislation during the move, the plan suggests.
"This will of course limit and radically reduce the level of service being provided to customers. The diminution of services and output and the reasons for these will be reflected in the director's annual reports."
The plan further points out that 75 per cent of the work of the office's 20 inspectors is carried out in Dublin.
Under current agreements, they could claim travel allowances from Carlow while working and living in Dublin. "This will have huge cost implications for the ODCA and the Department so agreements may need to be renegotiated with the unions."
