The depth of opposition within the National Disease Surveillance Centre to a proposal to relocate it to Tullamore, Co Offaly, has emerged in correspondence between the centre and the Department of Health released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
In one letter, the centre's director, Dr Darina O'Flanagan, said the proposal had come as "a devastating blow" to staff. She said staff were "for good and practical reasons" reluctant to move to the midlands and she complained there had been no consultation with them before the decision.
In other correspondence the chairman of the NDSC, Prof Dermot Hourihane, said the relocation of the centre away from Dublin could have adverse implications for the capacity of the centre to provide the best disease surveillance service for Ireland.
"The NDSC for Ireland should be located where most of the problems are going to present themselves and where it is most likely that the resolution of them will take place," he wrote in a letter to the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, in December 1999.
"Because of its large urban population with the largest centres of deprivation, highest concentration of asylum-seekers, port of entry for most travellers from abroad, outbreaks of communicable disease and serious incidents of imported disease are most likely to occur in the capital."
Dr O'Flanagan wrote that the decision left staff who had just joined the NDSC, set up in 1998, feeling badly let down. "Their strong view, which they have put to me is that it constitutes a very serious breach of faith on the part of NDSC that they should be confronted within weeks of joining us with a decision to relocate out of Dublin.
"A lot of effort has been expended over the last year to recruit key professionals from public health and the scientific community to work in the new centre. Now as the team has just been formed and is enthusiastically starting its important job of work, the team will be disrupted and the impetus lost," she wrote in November 1999.
In June 2000 she said a move to the midlands was not attractive to any member of staff.
She also said it would be unrealistic to expect busy Dublin-based professionals who were members of NDSC subcommittees, such as its scientific advisory subcommittee, to give a whole day to attend meetings in the midlands.
Moreover, she said a base in Tullamore would preclude both herself and other staff from the frequent attendance required of them at meetings of various working groups and committees such as the CJD Advisory Committee in the Department of Health.
In a confidential personal briefing note prepared for her meeting with the minister in February 2000, Dr O'Flanagan referred to the fact that the minister had objected to the NDSC relocating to more suitable premises in Blanchardstown, Dublin, for cost reasons.
She said an analysis by the NDSC showed that when account was taken of the added cost of travelling time, mileage and subsistence associated with working from Tullamore, the cost to the Exchequer of setting up there would be, if anything, greater than setting up in Blanchardstown.
The minister's private secretary, in his reply to Prof Hourihane in January 2000, said the minister believed the NDSC's concerns were surmountable.
"In view of this country's size, developments in communication etc, the minister does not accept that the relocation to a region adjacent to Dublin would deprive the NDSC of ready access to expertise and information on outbreaks in large urban areas. In this connection it should be noted that Tullamore is only some 60 miles from Dublin, with a good rail connection," he wrote.
"The Minister notes the point made about the location of the members of the specialist committees and would suggest that it is always possible to arrange to hold meetings in Dublin, even with the headquarters located in Tullamore.
"The Minister has also asked me to point out that it is a matter ultimately for him and Government to decide where State-funded services will be located. He cannot accept that the relocation of the centre away from Dublin should in itself compromise the development of a first-class national disease surveillance centre," he added.