The majority of senior civil servants at the Department of the Environment are unwilling to move out of Dublin as part of the decentralisation programme according to an internal survey. Liam Reid reports
Thirty-five out of 40 senior civil servants who responded to a union survey at the Department said they did not want to move to Wexford, where the new Department headquarters is to be located, or to any other town outside Dublin.
The figures emerged following an internal e-mail survey carried out by the Department's branch of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCP).
Forty of the 120 assistant principal and principal officers responded to the survey in the Department. It asked whether they would be willing to move with the Department to a location outside of Dublin, move to another Department outside of Dublin or remain in Dublin.
Only three civil servants said they would be willing to move outside Dublin with the Department, with two willing to move to another Department. The remaining 35 said they wanted to remain in Dublin.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, was informed of the survey results last night.
The AHCP represents assistant principal and principal officer grades. These grades are responsible for much of the policy formulation within Departments.
Only assistant secretaries and Department secretaries general hold more senior posts in the civil service.
The internal survey is the first to have been carried out in any Department, and if the opposition to decentralisation among staff is replicated in other Departments, it could pose serious problems for the Government's ambitious decentralisation programme.
The programme is voluntary, and the Government is hoping that lower house prices and a better quality of life will attract more than 10,000 civil servants to move outside of Dublin.
On Monday, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said there would be no compensation package, and that civil servants would be more than compensated by the "bonanza" they would get by selling houses in Dublin.
Government sources also pointed out that the number who answered the Department of the Environment survey was only a small proportion of the 1,360 staff in the Department.
The new headquarters of the Department of the Environment will be in Wexford town, with a further Department division in New Ross, employing 130 staff.