It is difficult for a government to admit making a mistake. Sometimes that admission can be grudging and partial. No matter. What is important is that the opportunity should be created to review a policy decision and to take remedial action.
The Taoiseach appears to have embarked upon such a course of action by pushing out the timescale for the Government's badly planned decentralisation programme beyond the general election. But a full-scale review of the financial and administrative implications of the programme is now required.
We have a bad planning record. Fragmentation and short-term objectives, sometimes driven by party political considerations, appear to be the order of the day. The legacy of the former minister for finance Charlie McCreevy, who announced a three-year decentralisation programme involving more than 10,000 public and civil servants in 2003, represents a classic case of attempted vote-buying without consideration of the potential cost to the State or the damage to the quality and fabric of our public administration. No proper analysis of the voluntary project was conducted. And the back-of-an-envelope exercise ignored the Government's own spatial strategy for regional development.
If anyone believes this exercise is about more effective governance, they should pay attention to Minister of State Tom Parlon, who has been given responsibility for managing the project. When probation officers refused to transfer to Navan, Co Meath, other public servants were immediately nominated to fill the vacancies. Mr Parlon remarked that local people didn't care what jobs came, so long as cheques were cashed each week.
The Taoiseach has now suggested it may not be possible to complete the decentralisation programme before 2010. It was crazy from the start to think that policy-making civil servants could live outside the political and administrative capital. Parts of the programme should be abandoned as soon as possible, also because of potential costs and the administrative disruption involved. Large numbers of civil servants will still move to the regions. But, as the pro-decentralisation Civil, Public and Services Union urges, these should involve non-specialist posts. The forced transfer of State agencies and other specialist posts could, according to the trade union Impact, include hidden costs of up to €65 million a year.
The Government is engaged in drafting a new National Development Plan for the period 2007-2013. That document is expected to address the recent surge in our population and the urgent need for better public transport, communications and infrastructure as the economy grows by about 5 per cent a year. Because of rapid, ongoing development within the greater Dublin area, the Cabinet should take the opportunity to reconsider its spatial strategy in an attempt to re-balance population growth and to concentrate economic activity within the regions. The decentralisation programme is a valid policy, but it was conceived in undue haste.