Madam, - Monday's "Head to Head" debate on the 2003 decentralisation plan provides some interesting insights into Government thinking in this area and into its broader understanding of its own National Spatial Strategy.
Defending the plan, Minister for State Martin Mansergh paints an idyllic picture of civil servants decentralised to Tipperary town, informing us that they "are very happy to be within 15 minutes or less commuting distance from home".
The agency in question is the Immigration and Naturalisation section of the Department of Justice. Dr Mansergh makes no reference to the commuting convenience, or otherwise, of the customers of this agency, whenever this might prove necessary. Customer convenience is seemingly not a relevant consideration in Government thinking.
This lack of consideration for customers is confirmed by John Kelleher of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants in his contribution on the topic. He cites several other examples of illogical relocation - the Irish Prison Service to Longford, the Development Aid section of Foreign Affairs to Limerick, the Public Appointments Service to Youghal and the Equality Tribunal to Portarlington.
Minister Mansergh also defends the lack of fit between the 2003 decentralisation "plan" and the 2002 National Spatial Strategy, explaining that "practically all the hubs and gateways already have civil service buildings, under previous decentralisation programmes". Yet a key objective of the Spatial Strategy was to concentrate future development in a finite number of identified locations - the gateways and hubs - in order to achieve sufficient scale in those locations to support economic delivery of services and infrastructural investment.
Instead, the 2003 decentralisation plan proposes to scatter 10,300 civil servants to 53 locations, most of which are neither gateways nor hubs, and Dr Mansergh appears happy to defend this "one-for-everyone-in-the-audience" approach.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has identified reform of the public service and extraction of better value for money as a key political priority. The thinking demonstrated in Minister Mansergh's contribution, allied to the drawbacks outlined by John Kelleher, would not inspire confidence in a happy outcome for either public servants or taxpayers. - Yours, etc,
PETER MOLLOY, Glenageary, Co Dublin.