Decentralisation

dresden8

SkepticOne wrote: »

Could the State not save more money outsourcing a lot of these jobs to India rather than to rural areas?

It's not about saving money, it's about spending it in marginal constituencies. You haven't been paying attention.

SkepticOne

dresden8 wrote: »

It's not about saving money, it's about spending it in marginal constituencies.

It is about many things. I think it has been acknowledged that savings are involved in moving from a high cost Dublin location to lower cost regional locations. Previous decentralisation plans have been more overtly about cost savings I will grant you that.

The_Conductor

SkepticOne wrote: »

It is about many things. I think it has been acknowledged that savings are involved in moving from a high cost Dublin location to lower cost regional locations. Previous decentralisation plans have been more overtly about cost savings I will grant you that.

It hasn't been acknowledged by anyone, for the simple reason- they have absolutely no idea of the costs involved. No-one has sat down and tried to enumerate the different costs- and weigh them up against the tangible benefits- to see if its worth while. Its purely a political gesture, rather than one that has any founding in economic merit.

irish_bob

smccarrick wrote: »

It hasn't been acknowledged by anyone, for the simple reason- they have absolutely no idea of the costs involved. No-one has sat down and tried to enumerate the different costs- and weigh them up against the tangible benefits- to see if its worth while. Its purely a political gesture, rather than one that has any founding in economic merit.

agree 100 %

Firetrap

That it's a casualty of government cuts says it all. If there was a financial saving to be made by decentralisation, they'd have kept it going.

SerialComplaint

SkepticOne wrote: »

Could the State not save more money outsourcing a lot of these jobs to India rather than to rural areas?

Don't feed the trolls.

CCCP^

ishmael whale wrote: »

No-one ever got rich by wasting money.

The epitaph of the Celtic Tiger and over 10 years of Fianna Fail running the show.

oscarBravo

SerialComplaint wrote: »

Don't feed the trolls.

Don't accuse people of trolling. Read the charter before posting again.

NewDubliner

Ducks agree to decentralisation.

Up to a dozen respected, long-term residents of Leinster House will not be returning to the Dáil when it resumes proceedings after the long summer break.....In what was described as a night of "high drama" involving nets and cardboard boxes, the ducks were successfully removed from Leinster House and relocated to the relative safety of west Dublin.

"The ducklings are thriving in Tymon Park and have integrated very well with the local wildlife,"

Firetrap

Ah but were they technical ducks or clerical grade ducks? Did they get promotions because of their willingness to move? Were the original senior ducks whitewalled by keeping them in a cardboard box til they agreed to move? :pac:

eigrod

Only just came across this article from the Indo.

So, finally some of the disgusting costs of this project are starting to trickle through. €30m for just 3 bodies !!!! What will the overall cost be if this farce is allowed to continue ?

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/three-state-bodies-cost-over-836430m-to-move-office-1454789.html

Three State bodies cost over €30m to move office
By Michael Lavery

Thursday August 14 2008

THE cost of decentralised office space for three Government bodies is now more than €30m.

The final bill is not yet in, as some site costs and temporary interim leases have yet to be worked out, Fine Gael TD Bernard J Durkan has revealed.

The costs for the Department of Finance, the Revenue Commissioners and the Office of Public Works were given in a letter to Mr Durkan from the Dept of Finance.

The figures were "unavailable" last June when Mr Durkan put down parliamentary questions on the issue.

The overall costs, including building and site purchases with fit out, but excluding VAT and fees, total more than €32m, the figures show.

They also reveal:

w The biggest single cost was for a project in Trim, Co Meath, which came to €10.41m;

w the purchase and fit out of a building in Tullamore, Co Offaly, came to €10.034m;

w buying of a site in Trim cost €3.6m;

w a site in Claremorris, Co Mayo, cost €2.5m;

w the fit out of a office in Listowel, Co Kerry, cost €1.3m. The annual rent for the long-term lease is €183,000.

The figures also show that site purchases for offices in Athy, Co Kildare, Kanturk, Co Cork and Kildare, have yet to be "finalised".

A long-term lease for an office in Kilrush, Co Clare, costs €85,000 a year, while the estimated fit out, but excluding VAT and fees, is €411,000.

In Loughrea, Co Galway, the government is paying €139,235, a year in rent for offices which cost another €572,000 to fit out -- but the cost of VAT and fees is not included.

And in Navan, Co Meath, the taxpayer is funding an office at a rent of €382,492 a year while the fit out is costing €1,430,608, again not counting VAT or fees.

Lease

In Athy, Co Kidare, a temporary lease of offices is costing €231,554, a year in rent, while fitting out the offices cost €493,000.

The rent for offices in Newcastle West in Limerick is €68,771 yearly while the cost of a "temporary interim lease" of offices in Naas, Co Kildare, has yet to be agreed.

"Other project costs" include €1,180,000 for offices in Newcastle West and €9,000 for a project in Kanturk, Co Cork and €16,000 for another in Youghal, Co Cork.

Amazingly, the costs for a project in Claremorris, Co Mayo, are listed as "nil".

Non-property costs for the OPW came to €21,621, the figures show.

- Michael Lavery

NewDubliner

eigrod wrote: »

And in Navan, Co Meath, the taxpayer is funding an office at a rent of €382,492 a year while the fit out is costing €1,430,608, again not counting VAT or fees.

This may be the Revenue Commissioners new office in Navan. It's not part of the decentralisation project at all. Ironically, they decided to open an office there because they have many customers in the area and plenty of staff volunteering to work in it.

The fit out cost is an interesting figure. No doubt, it's for for furniture and IT infrastructure and equipment. This kind of cost does not form part of the Government's own estimate of €900m which was for bare buildings only.

Firetrap

From the Sunday Tribune 21st September 2008

OPW calls halt to decentralisation after two people apply for 38 posts

The state body charged with helping to oversee the implementation of decentralisation had to call a halt to plans to move 38 of its own warehouse staff to Claremorris in Co Mayo after it received just two applications for the posts, new documents obtained by the Sunday Tribune have revealed.

Due to a previous decision to allocate the site of the existing warehouse in Dublin to affordable housing, the Office of Public Works also had to seek an alternative Dublin site to meet the "immediate urgent needs" of the office in question, its Central Engineering Workshop.

But despite the government's decision last July to pause the purchase of office accommodation for the decentralisation programme, the Office of Public Works received provisional authorisation later that month to proceed to tender stage for permanent accommodation for 104 other staff at a separate regional office in the town.

In a letter sent to the Department of Finance in May of this year, Vincent Campbell, director of Corporate Services with the OPW, informed the department that it was not in a position to progress plans to locate a warehouse facility for the government's Central Engineering Workshop (CEW) and some Government Supplies Agency (GSA) material.

This would have attracted some 38 posts, he said.

"As there are no applicants, save two, on the CEW/GSA warehouse side of the proposition – OPW is not in a position to progress this element of the proposal at this stage," he said.

NewDubliner

From the Sunday Independent, October 5:

By JOHN DRENNAN

Sunday October 05 2008

Ireland's ill-planned decentralisation debacle may have come to the same shuddering halt as the economy.

But the bills for Charlie Mc Creevy's last folly are set to continue rolling in for another 20 years -- with millions being paid for empty offices.

The rental costs on offices hired to house phantom civil servants in over 30 rural locations -- from Tubbercurry, Co Sligo to Furbo, Co Galway and further afield -- will cost the taxpayer over €67.3m.

"The decision to spend €67m renting office buildings that the State will never own in places no-one has ever heard of and which will house nothing more than imaginary civil servants is the perfect monument to the economic incompetence of this administration," said a Labour party source.

In Kilrush, which is described in tourist guides as being one of Clare's "best kept secrets", the taxpayer will be paying rent to private business interests for property "the State will never own for more than 25 years".

The costliest schemes are Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, where the Department of Social and Family Affairs has leased offices at a total cost of €16m, and in Navan, Co Meath, where the Revenue, the property regulator and the Department of Justice have leased offices for €8.8m and €11.5m.

In Carlow, the Department of Enterprise's 20-year lease will cost the taxpayer more than €7.3m whilst in Roscrea, Co Tipperary the Equality Authority Offices will cost the taxpayers over €2m.

Though some office space has been occupied, the current status of the decentralisation project -- where less than 20 per cent of the public sector has moved -- means there are huge swathes of offices across the country that are populated by nothing more tangible than desks and the odd chair.

The figures were given to Labour finance spokesperson Joan Burton in reply to a Dail question.

The article certainly asks some of the right questions but is confused about which offices are fully staffed and which are empty. It also repeats the highly questionable 20% figure which contains a great many jobs that simply moved from one non-Dublin location to another or where the job-holder did not move house (one of the claimed economic benefits of the scheme).

Sand

Decentralisation was the greatest vote buying con in the history of the state. It is to be hoped that as reality impacts on Fianna Fail it will be the first of the cutbacks and will be abandoned..

Its probably a vain hope that their will be criminal investigations into the whole affair. I cant imagine a greater waste of public money for no benefit. It would be interesting to determine the economic links between decentralisation and Fianna Fail supporters.

Dinarius

Sand wrote: »

Decentralisation was the greatest vote buying con in the history of the state.

Not quite........Jack Lynch's removal of domestic rates promise in the 1976 election was. It destroyed local government forever and was, arguably, one of the reasons property went crazy in the last 10 years. If houses were ratable, the market would take a far more measured view of the cost of them.

I cannot see FF openly backing down on decentralisation yet. Not their style. The only bright side to the cost of accommodation over the next 20 years is that it's more than €30m less than the cost of the voting machines, which are probably worth a fraction of what that fool from Waterford made us pay for them.

D.

Firetrap

A big problem with decentralisation, apart from buying up land at inflated prices, is that they were going to have to recruit new staff to fill some of these offices. If they'd pull the plug on this last year, they'd have made money back by selling the sites that are sittting idle all around the country.

Breezer

According to The Irish Times today, any elements of the plan not yet put in place are to be scrapped with a potential saving of €400 million:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/1006/1222959411162.html wrote:

The Government is also to abandon the remaining elements of its decentralisation programme as part of the forthcoming budget, with an estimated possible saving of €400 million. Elements of the programme which are already well under way will not be halted.

Now, would it be too much to ask them to listen to the rest of Richard Bruton's ideas while they're at it?

Firetrap

They're still hell-bent on pressing ahead with this, despite everything

Government Announcement of 14 October 2008

Decentralisation: Key projects going ahead

The Government has reviewed the decentralisation programme and identified priority elements on which implementation should proceed at this time. The completion of these projects, coupled with the progress already made, will bring 6,000 public service jobs to over 40 locations outside of Dublin. Details can be found attached in Table A. Decisions on the timing of further work on the remainder of the programme are being deferred pending a review in 2011 in light of budgetary developments.

Having considered the progress made on the human resource aspects of the Programme, commitments already made, the costs involved, the expectations of staff already assigned to decentralising posts and the business readiness of organisations to transfer to the new location in each case, the Government has identified the projects which will continue at this time – see Table A.

The Government has decided to defer further work on implementation of the other elements of the decentralisation programme pending a review in 2011 in light of budgetary developments. These projects are set out in Table B.

A capital expenditure envelope of up to €72m in 2009 and €90m in 2010 will be provided for the acquisition of the property in respect of the projects going ahead.

In reaching its decision the Government had also taken account of (i) the report of the Decentralisation Implementation Group (DIG) on State Agencies and (ii) the views of the Decentralisation Sub-Group of the SMI Implementation Group of Secretaries General.

The DIG and the Department of Finance will give priority to putting in place arrangements for finalising these projects and the Department will be working through the details of these arrangements, in consultation with decentralising organisations and the public service unions as appropriate, on a case-by-case basis.

Link

NewDubliner

Firetrap wrote: »

They're still hell-bent on pressing ahead with this, despite everything

Isn't there an election in 2011? The spin starts in 2010.

Capt'n Midnight

NewDubliner wrote: »

Isn't there an election in 2011? The spin starts in 2010.

What about the local elections ?

Moonbound...

Wanted Wanted Wanted, professionals from all industries and backrounds to establish new political party in Ireland....
Let's be honest it would not take too much effort to do a better job than the jokers we are stuck with...

The rules of joining this new political force in Ireland are; (But not limited to, and please feel free to add to the list)

• You must give your self over completely and without compromise to the service of your country.
• You must be willing to do whatever it takes to build a successful Ireland based on equality for all.
• You must never act selfishly or in the interests of one paticular group.
• You must expect nothing more in return than you give your country.

Revoloution is in the air my friends, be part of it before we all end up paying too high a price for the ineptitude of the present government and un willingness of the opposition to challenge them......

Erin Go Bragh

The_Conductor

Why not just nip down to The Curragh- and gently persuade the army to mount a coup? I'm sure there are more than a few officers more than willing to give it a try at this stage?

NewDubliner

From the Irish Times, 11/11/2008:

The Equality Authority is hit by a double whammy in the Budget. In the decentralisation programme 13 bodies are listed as having an advance party in place, but permanent accommodation is not currently affordable, and no further decentralisation is taking place. The Equality Authority stands alone as the sole organisation listed for decentralisation, where permanent accommodation is not currently affordable. Yet it is required to move 15 of its staff out of Dublin to continue the decentralisation process.

Fifteen Equality Authority staff are already in Roscrea as part of the decentralisation programme. However, this does not mean that 15 existing staff moved from Dublin. As has happened elsewhere under decentralisation, people moved within departments to get the numbers right. Those unable, for family and other reasons, to move from Dublin moved elsewhere within the public service, and were replaced by new people already in or near the decentralised centre.

If few of the existing Dublin-based staff are able to move to Roscrea, which is likely, decentralisation will mean that 15 trained and experienced Dublin-based staff will be replaced in Roscrea by up to 15 staff from elsewhere in the public service with no background in equality legislation and its implementation.

Other than than a bit of extra business for the local Spar, assuming the 15
staff don't bring their own sandwiches, I cannot think of any benefit coming from this move.

We need fewer, bigger, offices that are more cost-effective to manage. This in turn would allow for greater civil-service mobility and flexibility as staff would not need to move from town to follow a career path.

dresden8

NewDubliner wrote: »

From the Irish Times, 11/11/2008:



Other than than a bit of extra business for the local Spar, assuming the 15
staff don't bring their own sandwiches, I cannot think of any benefit coming from this move.

We need fewer, bigger, offices that are more cost-effective to manage. This in turn would allow for greater civil-service mobility and flexibility as staff would not need to move from town to follow a career path.

Don't worry, the staff won't have to worry about decentralisation when they get f*cked out of their jobs. They killed the Celtic Tiger you know.

SerialComplaint

dresden8 wrote: »

Don't worry, the staff won't have to worry about decentralisation when they get f*cked out of their jobs. They killed the Celtic Tiger you know.

Nothing to do with the banks and the property developers then?

The_Conductor

dresden8 wrote: »

They killed the Celtic Tiger you know.

How so?

NewDubliner

SerialComplaint wrote: »

Nothing to do with the banks and the property developers then?

smcarrick wrote:

How so?

I think dresden8 was merely being facetious, in the spirit of the current 'public service is evil' campaign.

By not moving house according to government whim, the public service is, of course, not participating in the housing market churn on which the government has depended.

Hence, they've killed the 'celtic tiger'.

Firetrap

With the current furore over the cervical cancer vaccine and the relatively small cost of implementing it, I'm amazed that there hasn't been a bigger kerfuffle made about decentralisation and the money that's being wasted on it. There are sites lying idle all over the country which cost millions. Some of them don't look like they'll be put to use anytime soon. Everyone seems to hate public servants except when they move to their local town :P

There's a report on decentralisation of stage agencies out now. Some of it makes for shocking reading IMHO. What a disgraceful waste of money.

dresden8

NewDubliner wrote: »

I think dresden8 was merely being facetious, in the spirit of the current 'public service is evil' campaign.

By not moving house according to government whim, the public service is, of course, not participating in the housing market churn on which the government has depended.

Hence, they've killed the 'celtic tiger'.

Jesus, sarcasm is communicated through a lot more than smileys on the internet you know. When I was in school they taught sub-text. And class sizes were bigger, ironically.

Well done New Dubliner, for having a brain.

And, apparently it was our naked greed, not the banks, developers or politicians, that caused the crash.

It's interesting that all the economists who couldn't see what was happening or predict what was going to happen or were conviced there would be a "soft landing" are now full sure in hindsight that it was public servants all along who caused it to happen.

For fuck sake, you got it wrong every step of the way to this point, why is anybody listening to you now?

Pr1cks.