The pace of decentralisation may have to be substantially slowed if the Government is to make it work, a civil service union leader has claimed.
The Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCPS) has engaged a consultant to help it determine the likely consequences of the plan to move 10,000 public servants from Dublin.
Mr Brian Barry, a former partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers, will assist the union in preparing for a special delegate conference on the issue next month. The union is engaging in "intensive" consultation with members in the meantime.
Mr Seán Ó Riordáin, general secretary, said the conclusion that decentralisation would have to be slowed was likely to be "startlingly obvious" when the consultation process was finished.
The Government says the programme, involving the transfer of staff to more than 50 decentralised offices, can be completed within three years.
Mr Ó Riordáin, however, says there are serious questions about the potential impact on staff, as well as the provision of services to the public.
Large-scale staff surpluses were likely to be created, he said, as new workers were recruited to fill vacancies outside Dublin. This would result in large numbers of public servants in Dublin with no function and no prospect of career advancement.
There were other issues, including increased travel costs, which had not been properly analysed to date.
For example, civil servants travelling to Brussels on EU business could leave Dublin on a Monday afternoon and be back the following day. "If they have to travel from Killarney, however, there's an extra day's travel each way."
In a letter to branch officers, advising them of the special delegate conference on March 1st, Mr Ó Riordáin also questioned the "capacity of a decentralised and fragmented civil service to deliver effective services".
He said this had been one of the issues raised at a consultative council meeting of the union last month.
The role of Mr Barry, of Burnham House Consultants, in the consultative process currently being undertaken by the union is explained in a notice to be published on the AHCPS website today. He is to be involved in all aspects of the review, which is to lead to the production of an overview summary document, to be presented to the conference in March.
Mr Barry previously assisted the union in its submission to the public service benchmarking body.
