Decentralisation - why did it fail?

Dannyboy83

Why did decentralisation fail?
Was it a good or a bad idea?
Will it be implemented in the future at any stage?

Sleepy

For the same reason so many other projects failed: the government are/were incompetent and had left the public service to be run by their unions.

dory

It failed because no one wants to live in Carlow??

Well for my sector (Irish Aid) it's failing because aid professionals need to meet foreign diplomats a lot so we just end up costing more on expenses getting from Limerick to Dublin the whole time.

SkepticOne

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

Why did decentralisation fail?
Was it a good or a bad idea?
Will it be implemented in the future at any stage?

In theory it should have been possible to save money by relocating departments to less expensive parts of the country. This would have been a valid rationale, imo, for decentralisation and would have guided decision making and has been the reasoning behind previous moves in the 80's.

However cost saving was not something that could be politically used as a reason for doing anything during the Celtic Tiger era. Instead it became a means of ministers to buy votes in their constituencies.

Like a lot of things (e.g. benchmarking), the word itself is a misnomer. Relocation or partial relocation would have been a better term. In Ireland we tend to give words unique meanings. Really proper decentalisation would involve splitting departments into multiple regions, each dealing with the issues of that region rather than moving the bulk of a department to some new location.

mikemac

It wasn't a bad idea, just terrible organization.
It should have been planned before it was announced.
And offices go to appropriate locations, not to be lobbied for by local politicians.

While administration can be done from anywhere was I only one finding it strange the department of the Marine was to go to Cavan?
Of course the department can work in any office building but surely it could be located in a fishing town, there's no shortage of them

And it can work, our local town setup a massive Revenue office complex back in the early 90's. That was all decentralized at the time

I think it can work and it's worth looking at again in a number of years.

bladespin

Give a person a job in Dublin, let them work at it for 10 years and then ask them to move to the midlands, never was going to be an option, can't blame the workers or unions, asking people to make such a fundamental change to their lives was always going to be a big ask.

Poor planning from the very start meant the government had a mess to deal with and as usual no-one had the fogggiest how to handle it.

Now would certainly be a good time to revisit this, with a few lay-offs in the public sector and departmental closures the take up could be significant.

ednwireland

it was nothing todo with decentralising effectively it was vote grabbing of the basest order, the offices went to the current ministers constituency (social and family affairs was supposed to go to donegal town - mary coughlan's constiuency) made a mockery of the spatial strategy (not that that was anything else but made up)

and now you cant sell your house and cover your moving costs either

Tipp Man

I think it had potential to be a good plan but some fundamental errors

1) too many locations - entire departments should have been moved to 1 town and not several, so 7-10 locations should have been selected and that is all

2) the time frame was too long (is it still ongoing??), it should have taken no more than 2 years to implement from the budget when it was announced

3) gross under estimation of the unions and the PS mentality. It should have been a take it or leave it situation

dan_d

I'm guessing because it was so badly organised. Or was not organised at all.
They left it too open-ended and gave people too many choices - as Tipp man said, take it or leave it. As with everything, there would have been a whole heap of complaining and then people would have got over it (witness plastic bag taxes and smoking ban). We excel at whinging about anything new or different.
If you're really serious about a theory like that, you need a few contingency plans, you need to have it ALL damn well organised (not spread out all over the country between departments) and more importantly, you need to strike while the iron is hot, and not drag it out over years. Does anyone even know what's happening there?Is it done? Is it ongoing?
It's not a bad idea in theory, but as with many things, in practice it's next too impossible to implement if it's only done half-heartedly, making concessions to every second person.

dresden8

Tipp Man wrote: »

3) gross under estimation of the unions and the PS mentality. It should have been a take it or leave it situation

Indeed, the public sector should have been prepared to throw themselves upon the pyre of Fianna Fails electoral ambitions.

I think not.

imme

Charlie McCreevy had the bright idea to send government departments/agencies to the 4 corners of the country, spread across the 3 green fields. He must have looked at the map and stuck a pin in it. It didn't bear any relation to the National Spatial Strategy, remember that. Fianna Fáils friends were rubbing their hand when they heard government departments/agencies were being sent to palces with little or no office accommodation.

marco_polo

Had it been limited to a few major urban areas such as Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, it might have been more successful.

bridgitt

Sleepy wrote: »

For the same reason so many other projects failed: the government are/were incompetent and had left the public service to be run by their unions.

Many ordinary public servants wanted and still want to live outside of Dublin, beside their family friends and neighbours in the country. Witness the traffic queues on Friday evening and Sunday from and to Dublin. It would have made sense to have more decentralisation, to ease the traffic in Dublin. Also, property is cheaper to rent outside Dublin. The government could have saved a fortune by decentralising properly, and eased Dublins traffic. A win-win situation for all involved.

Scofflaw

A theoretically reasonable idea, let down by a number of practical considerations - and when I say "let down by", I mean that the practical implementation of the idea was totally overwhelmed by them. No consideration seems to have been given to whether specialist staff need to be in Dublin - the Irish Aid section of the DFA being a case in point. No consideration seems to have been given to the fact that if specialist staff (engineers, architects, foresters etc) were unwilling or unable to move (spouses with jobs being another practical consideration that was uncatered for), then moving the department or section that relied on them simply meant gutting that part of the civil service of its institutional memory and accumulated expertise (the movement of Forestry to Wexford is a good example). Little or no attention was paid to spatial strategy or planning - instead civil servants were parcelled out as vote purchases. Little or no attention was paid to the fact that one of the greatest obstacles in the irish Civil Service appears to be the segregation of information and knowledge into small sub-departmental silos, something that would be exacerbated rather than improved by the exercise.

And so on - in brief, I'd say that it might have been a good idea in another country.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Rantan

great in theory, but typical Irish lack of planning. What really bugs me is the amount spent on buying up land in the areas which were due to receive decentralised departments, but which never happened. Millions spent at thte height of the boom on empty sites that were never used. Two sites in Waterford purchased for €10 million for the OPW but were never developed, now next to worthless apparently. Many more sites like that around the country.

murphaph

I think for a small country like Ireland it was a bloody stupid idea, particularly dishing out departments to towns and villages in the middle of nowhere. I cannot imagine how it can be efficient to split up departments like that-I'd say the money spent on travel for meetings easily outweighs any cost savings by moving out of Dublin (can't be that many to make seeing as the govt probably own 90%+ of their property, rather than renting it).

If they had to do it, then I agree with the poster above who said it should have been limited to the main urban areas-Cork, Limerick, Galway and say Waterford and that's all.

Funnily enough Germany is still in the process of recentralisation with departments still moving steadily back to Berlin after a 60 odd year hiatus!

The next biggest dept to 'come back' is the German ministry of intelligence (Bundesnachrichtendienst) which aims to be fully back in Berlin by 2014 at the latest.

P. Breathnach

Scofflaw wrote: »

A theoretically reasonable idea, let down by a number of practical considerations - and when I say "let down by", I mean that the practical implementation of the idea was totally overwhelmed by them. No consideration seems to have been given to whether specialist staff need to be in Dublin - the Irish Aid section of the DFA being a case in point. No consideration seems to have been given to the fact that if specialist staff (engineers, architects, foresters etc) were unwilling or unable to move (spouses with jobs being another practical consideration that was uncatered for), then moving the department or section that relied on them simply meant gutting that part of the civil service of its institutional memory and accumulated expertise (the movement of Forestry to Wexford is a good example). Little or no attention was paid to spatial strategy or planning - instead civil servants were parcelled out as vote purchases. Little or no attention was paid to the fact that one of the greatest obstacles in the irish Civil Service appears to be the segregation of information and knowledge into small sub-departmental silos, something that would be exacerbated rather than improved by the exercise.

I think that sums it up, and in more temperate language than I would have been able to use.

An amount of decentralisation is a good thing. Most (perhaps all) of the earlier exercises were successful. That is largely because proper consideration was given to the sort of issues that Scofflaw identifies. The McCreevy package was a political stroke of the worst kind.

Much damage has been done. There has been a great deal of shuffling of staff in preparation for decentralisation, some of which will not now happen. Institutional memory has been wiped out in some sections, resulting in much effort being wasted by people having to learn things that their predecessors knew very well, and many mistakes being made (in general, those mistakes that I have heard about were not very damaging, but have led to effort being diverted to repairing things rather than getting on with the real work). In sum, there has been a significant loss of efficiency.

Careers have been damaged. I know people who turned down promotion because to accept it would involve moving to another part of the country. You might think that is relatively unimportant, but it might not be. The effect is that those deemed best suited for the promotional posts do not actually fill them, and the positions go by default to people who have been deemed less suitable, but are prepared to re-locate.

Dannyboy83

Some great answers, thanks.

Why not just build a big business park in East Kildare e.g. Naas, Celbridge and stick all government offices there?

That would seem to have eliminated an awful lot of problems mentioned above, and its still close enough to Dublin, with fibre optic and a motorway and connection to M50/airport, to eliminate an awful lot of other problems.

You could do it tommorow and it would take a lot of pressure off Dublin, wouldn't it?

Might put all those empty houses in Meath to use aswell.

SkepticOne

Real decentralisation would involve the splitting of a service into regional components each responding to regional problems. As pointed out, our government got this wrong even at the planning stage. Ironically while decentralisation was supposed to be happening in the civil service part of the public sector a massive process of centralisation actually happened in another part of the public sector as the regional health boards were centralised into the HSE. Absolutely zero coherence in government policy.

Absurdum

marco_polo wrote: »

Had it been limited to a few major urban areas such as Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, it might have been more successful.

+1

most people have no interest in uprooting their families to the arse end of nowhere just to get some worthless idiot TD re-elected

LookBehindYou

and all the rented places around the country being paid for by the taxpayer, waste of money.

invincibleirish

The idea of decentralisation in ireland is nonsense anyway. instead of decentralising Gov. departments it would make far more sense to devolve decision making in certain areas to a regional level. To do this would mean reorganising our local gov. structures and taking the parish pump out of national politics.

As for why did decentralisation fail, its been answered already. Decentralisation was FFs and in particular Charlie McCreevys baby, there is still some who believe he was above the gombeenism inherent in our politics because he lined the Irish middle classes pockets with SSIA gold. But he and Bertie pulled another slick one with the decentralisation plan. An unmitigated failure to the general public but plenty of folk benefited, thats why FF still are at around 20-25% in the opinion polls. They haven't gone away you know.

Absurdum

Don't forget Parlon country!

Tipp Man

invincibleirish wrote: »

The idea of decentralisation in ireland is nonsense anyway. instead of decentralising Gov. departments it would make far more sense to devolve decision making in certain areas to a regional level. To do this would mean reorganising our local gov. structures and taking the parish pump out of national politics.

Interesting thought but is the country big enough for this to happen (work)?? Would we just be adding more unnecessary layers of wasters to our political system??

invincibleirish

Tipp Man wrote: »

Interesting thought but is the country big enough for this to happen (work)?? Would we just be adding more unnecessary layers of wasters to our political system??

You'd be reducing it. As it stands we have a rather large public service bureaucracy employed at county level and below in UDCs/town councils, Udaras no Gaeltachta etc, as well as central Gov. agencies like Shannon development & Limerick regeneration programmes. There is largescale duplication of services offered which could be merged and streamlined*. We are seriously over represented by councillors in this country.

If you merge local councils* together into organisations with critical mass you can then decentralise central Gov functions and Quangos into areas currently administered through central gov.

Examples of what you could devolve would include resource allocation currently administered through the Dep. of Local Gov/environment, Schools mgmt, agriculture, transport etc.

Essentially you'd be moving local/regional issues currently addressed at national level to a regional level. With this you'd be streamlining Central Government (and the number of TDs), abolishing local gov. as we know it and creating a single two tier structure of national governance to replace the top heavy multi layered one we currently have now.

*(Reforming local Gov., and in particular abolishing/merging local authorities, would be met with enormous resistance from vested interests i'd say. Primarily the trade unions because of the changes to work practices on one side, and gombeen ireland scared to consider the redrawing of local authority lines which might not reflect GAA boundaries on the other. On top of that the loss of power to the TDs would mean resistance from them as well i'd say, as would incumbent Cllrs. What i propose isn't a new concept, and neither is the sentiment that would defeat it.)

Tipp Man

invincibleirish wrote: »

You'd be reducing it. As it stands we have a rather large public service bureaucracy employed at county level and below in UDCs/town councils, Udaras no Gaeltachta etc, as well as central Gov. agencies like Shannon development & Limerick regeneration programmes. There is largescale duplication of services offered which could be merged and streamlined*. We are seriously over represented by councillors in this country.

If you merge local councils* together into organisations with critical mass you can then decentralise central Gov functions and Quangos into areas currently administered through central gov.

Examples of what you could devolve would include resource allocation currently administered through the Dep. of Local Gov/environment, Schools mgmt, agriculture, transport etc.

Essentially you'd be moving local/regional issues currently addressed at national level to a regional level. With this you'd be streamlining Central Government (and the number of TDs), abolishing local gov. as we know it and creating a single two tier structure of national governance to replace the top heavy multi layered one we currently have now.

*(Reforming local Gov., and in particular abolishing/merging local authorities, would be met with enormous resistance from vested interests i'd say. Primarily the trade unions because of the changes to work practices on one side, and gombeen ireland scared to consider the redrawing of local authority lines which might not reflect GAA boundaries on the other. On top of that the loss of power to the TDs would mean resistance from them as well i'd say, as would incumbent Cllrs. What i propose isn't a new concept, and neither is the sentiment that would defeat it.)

Well i personally have liked the idea for a while but I'm just not sure it would work in this country not through a fault in the principle but in how it would be implemented here.

Look at the HSE for example, merged all the health boards and you would expect a lot of synergies but not in Ireland, there were absolutely no redundancies.

seclachi

marco_polo wrote: »

Had it been limited to a few major urban areas such as Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, it might have been more successful.

Exactly, were just about finally getting a continuous motorway between the two largest citys in the country. The road between the 2nd and 3rd largest is a country lane in some parts. It takes forever to get around this country, and theres no public transport outside of buses. And then of course when you do move to a small town you have next to no services such as IT. Clearly it was a bit of political manoeuvring that needlessly uprooted alot of people and caused good workers to leave.

AlekSmart

The next biggest dept to 'come back' is the German ministry of intelligence (Bundesnachrichtendienst) which aims to be fully back in Berlin by 2014 at the latest.

Murphaph,would this Department have control over their Knowledge Based Economy,or as its called down the Midlands way,de schmart economy.... ?

murphaph

AlekSmart wrote: »

Murphaph,would this Department have control over their Knowledge Based Economy,or as its called down the Midlands way,de schmart economy.... ?

Lol, dats de wan!

baalthor

mikemac wrote: »

While administration can be done from anywhere was I only one finding it strange the department of the Marine was to go to Cavan?
Of course the department can work in any office building but surely it could be located in a fishing town, there's no shortage of them

Do civil servants in the Dept of Marine ever visit fisher-men or fishing sites?

But anyway the site for this is still an empty field in the middle of Cavan town facing an empty apartment block. This must be what the Government meant by "spatial strategy" ....

Decentralisation was an incredibly stupid policy which has cost the country an enormous amount of money. If they really wanted to save money they could have outsourced a lot of the functions to Bangalore:D

I remember Eamonn O'Cuiv was asked where would people living in one-off houses get work as most companies want to locate in large urban areas. O'Cuiv stated that they would get employment in the decentralised government departments. Sounded crazy but we ended up with departments being smashed up and relocated to small towns and even smaller villages.

TheCandystripes

who wants to live in some boring place?