Civil service decentralisation

Madam, - The current decentralisation scheme has been neither planned nor discussed in any meaningful way

Madam, - The current decentralisation scheme has been neither planned nor discussed in any meaningful way. One of its major aspects has scarcely figured even in the little informed debate there has been.

This is the new pressure that will come on public servants to favour their Department's region when making decisions.

Dublin-based public servants can be objective - for three reasons, one obvious, two perhaps less so. The first is that for all its size and vastly disproportionate contribution to the tax take, Dublin does not lobby for itself with anything like the intensity, obsessiveness and commitment of a fair-sized country town. The second is that mutual awareness and day-to-day contact act as a check on individuals, bodies and Departments which might over favour the Dublin area. The third, perhaps least obvious, is that public servants based in Dublin are relatively anonymous and do not belong as a body to any particular suburb, district or region. They are, as public servants, relatively immune to personal pressure.

If all of the staff of a body or Department were living in one area, then information could be solicited and pressure exerted not only through the existing political channels but also in pubs and shops, at sporting events, at religious observances, and school functions. The only institution in the State which has shown any sign of being able to resist the pressure of the parish pump will be brought under the same kind of pressure as local government officials. (Local government officials, as a matter of record, can need Garda protection from the more assertive members of their communities.)

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It will be a world where inside information proliferates. Fantastic public projects, of great local significance, will abound. It will be hard to blame public sector officials who more or less unconsciously favour their own region. It will also be hard to remove the suspicion that such favouritism exists.

In short, decentralisation has all of the marks of great Fianna Fáil initiatives of the past. (One thinks of the Lynch-O'Donoghue borrowings, or the abolition of rates.) It is a sure-fire vote winner, a safe bet for which the civic culture of the nation will pay for years to come. - Yours, etc.,

ANNE O'BRIEN, St Kevin's Parade, Dublin 8.