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Decentralisation

uncivilservant

As a dublin civil servant, i'm sure most people can guess what my attitude is to the current implementation of mass decentralisation. But i'd be interested to hear what others think.

Good thing? Bad thing? Quit your whining and be happy you have a job?

Anyone?

Mods: I had considered posting this to B/E/F rather than Politics, but to be honest i'm not sure which board it suits more. PI probably ha.

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uncivilservant

Why?

Cork

Originally posted by uncivilservant
Why?

Why should these jobs be taken up by public servants?

When they take time off to take up these jobs - Is it counted as holidays in their day job?

uncivilservant

Why wouldn't it be?

lucernarian

Id say loads of people would like to be returning officers etc. at elections. It's clearly unfair if good candidates for the "job" are turned down simply because they're not civil servants. I wonder who was the civil servant who came up with that rule

uncivilservant

Can we have some facts, please?

Other than demonstrating the size of the chips on some people's shoulders regarding the public service, what exactly does this have to do with Decentralisation?

cyclopath2001

I think it also demonstrates how certain parties are trying to draw attention away from the huge flaws of the relocation scheme by projecting it as an engine of civil service reform & by trying to harvest the begrudgers' vote.

spongebob

According to the Tribune today Macroom , Fermoy and Youghal are among the 5 least favourite destinations ........ they must already know that Cork will be tring to get them into the local FF cumann as soon as they show up.

The 5 Favourite destinations are all well inside the Pale but outside the M50 .

I still don't want them in Galway so the Pale will do fine ...... maybe make it the western fringe of the Pale about 40 Miles out from Dubin .

M

Cork

Originally posted by Muck
According to the Tribune today Macroom , Fermoy and Youghal are among the 5 least favourite destinations ........ they must already know that Cork will be tring to get them into the local FF cumann as soon as they show up.
M

I am not even a member of a political party. But It is a good idea of join one.
Thanks Muck!

But Civil Servants have another couple of months to decide. Macroom , Fermoy and Youghal are not bad locations at all.

Youghal has a seaside and Perks Funfair. (Better than the continent diuring a good Summer)
Fermoy has a river & is getting a bypass. (Plenty Fish)
Macroom is where they do the counts in Cork North West for the General election. (The excitement every 4 years).

therecklessone

Originally posted by Cork

Youghal has a seaside and Perks Funfair. (Better than the continent diuring a good Summer)

I'd say the Riviera's shi*ting itself...

ishmael whale

http://www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sgJ9jh2kuMCbg.asp

The amount of self delusion even still going on about this programme is hard to credit. In fairness to this article in the Irish Examiner, after an attempt at an upbeat opening line, it does admit that the programme will have no real impact on regional development. But the author tries to convince himself that there are squads of civil servants in Dublin wanting to relocate elsewhere.

We know from the figures released that only 288 civil servants currently working in Dublin have any pressing interest in moving to the locations West of the Shannon, and only 263 have expressed an interest in moving to any of the Munster locations. 868 of the 1442 opting for Leinster and Cavan are accounted for by Meath, Kildare and Louth, and would look to be people already living in those locations but seeking a shorter commute.

Let me say I’m not saying that the civil service exists for the convenience of its staff. But suggesting, as the author of this article does, that large numbers of Dublin based civil servants want to relocate is just plain wrong.

uncivilservant

Want to stay in Dublin? Looks like all you have to do is contact our local FF'er:

Decentralisation will not affect Finglas Jobs - Pat Carey TD

More than 180 jobs in Finglas that may have been located elsewhere due to the Government's Decentralisation Programme are safe according to Pat Carey TD.

"General Medical Services (Payments) Board which employs 180 people will not be decentralised as previously expected.

Staff of GMS did not want to relocate and expressed their concerns to me as their local Fianna Fáil public representative. I made representations on their behalf to the Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy TD and Minister for Health Michael Martin TD and asked them to reconsider their plans for GMS."

"I am delighted they acted favourably on my representations and I welcome their commitment to me that GMS will not now be relocated out of Finglas. I am pleased for the 180 staff members and their families and I wish them continued success, concluded Pat Carey TD."

(from http://www.politics.ie/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5842)

ishmael whale

A TSSA representative this morning said the figure of 200 Bus Éireann employees was still actually on the table. Presumably 120 unneeded people will be recruited to make up the numbers. Add to the 40 new General Register Office staff taking up space in Roscommon while the jobs they are supposed to be doing remain fully staffed in Dublin, query what the staff in Agriculture will be doing when the simplified system of support payments is implemented, wonder if the staff in Ballina who used to deal with housing grants will ever be given new work to do and it all adds up to an appalling waste of resources.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0713/decentralisation
Bus staff reject Mitchelstown move
July 13, 2004 12:23
Staff at Bus Éireann's head office in Dublin have said that not one of them intends moving to Co Cork if the Government presses ahead with plans to decentralise the office to Mitchelstown.
The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, representing the clerical and managerial staff, said that if relocation goes ahead, every single member of staff in Bus Éireann's head office will be new.
The TSSA members will gather on O'Connell Street, Dublin, this lunchtime to launch 81 balloons, to signify the 81 jobs due for decentralisation.
The union said 85% of Bus Éireann staff already work outside of Dublin, with one in five of the company's staff already working in Co Cork.
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2004/05/20/story483400300.asp
WELL over half the 200 Bus Éireann employees earmarked for decentralisation to Mitchelstown, Co Cork, cannot be transferred because they are bus drivers and mechanics who need to be based in Dublin.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=44&si=1213627&issue_id=11123
In 1992 the then Government decided to move the General Register Office (GRO) to Roscommon. The target date was 1996. So leisurely has been the pace that the move will not be completed until the middle of next year.
But there has been progress. There are 40 staff in the Roscommon office. The Dublin office (need one say?) remains fully staffed.
http://www.agriculture.gov.ie/index.jsp?file=pressrel/2003/130-2003.xml
The Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Joe Walsh, TD, announced today that he had decided that all direct payments for Cattle, Sheep and Arable Crops will be fully decoupled from production as and from 1 January 2005.……. Minister Walsh added that an advantage of full decoupling will be a significant reduction in the level of bureaucracy for farmers and the Department.

lucernarian

F**k the term "The pale" We are not second class irish people. Its just a historical term that should be dead and buried. I dont want dubliners where I live if the consequences of that is losing our local communities to an anonymous society. Why can't we start working in our local areas again. We are not Dubliners but let civil servants go to wherever they want provided they will bring positive influence to their local area. I wonder if civil servants should stay after all to stop an extra influx into local communities being damaged already.

Victor

To be honest the GRO is doing a lot more work than they had been doing due to the increase in birth and marriage rates (and the introduction of divorce

), the civilisation of marriage and they have been computerising all their records. But yes this is all coming to an end and they will be left with a bunch of people in Dublin with no work.

ishmael whale

Certainly a surplus in Dublin would be easier to absorb, and creating an island is Roscommon is leaving a hostage to fortune particularly if integration of civil registration into Social Welfare systems does away with the need for a seperate function. But I'm not sure you are right to say the surplus will be in Dublin.

The Roscommon office is not open to the public, and what exactly they do there at present I'm not clear. The Dublin office has a public office for the issue of certs and a research room for geneology (I've a horrible feeling that's not how to spell 'geneology'). The research room benefits from being in the same town as the other relevant national repositories - National Archives, National Library, RCB library - so they'd be nuts to close it, even if they do open a duplicate operation in Roscommon for the optics.

I don't know what effect computerisation has on the setup, but traditionally each county had an office that held all local records, being the original registrations. The GRO held copies of all local records, collected every quarter. (Incidently, this means the GRO would not really be impacted by an increase in births - the registrations are done locally, and the local staff create copies of those records for transmission to GRO). So the GRO could issue a cert in respect of any birth, death or marriage once they had the copy. In bygone days the main purpose was probably to protect records from loss by effectively having an offsite backup, but actually most staff of the GRO are engaged in providing a cert issuing service to the public.

Its ideal location for convenience to the public would be a county or town where there was a concentration of people not born in that locality, as it would provide them with an accessable place where they could obtain their certs over the counter. Dublin would seem to be the place that best meets that definition. So, again, it would seem nutty to close its Dublin office which actually serves a purpose even if a 'lets pretend' public office is eventually opened in Roscommon.

Victor

And things start to all go wrong (please note McDowell wants to castrate(!) the Equality Authority)

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/3610291?view=Eircomnet

State bodies concerned over plans for decentralisation
From:ireland.com
Saturday, 17th July, 2004

Major national road projects are likely to be significantly delayed because of the Government's decentralisation programme, the National Roads Authority has warned.

It says the programme has "extremely serious" implications for its own operations, including its plan to complete major inter-urban routes by 2008 to 2010.

Other State bodies have also expressed serious reservations about the programme in documents released yesterday.

The Equality Authority says the loss of skilled and experienced staff arising from decentralisation could expose it to the risk of court action.

It could take years, it warns, for it to rebuild lost capacities if its planned move to Roscrea, Co Tipperary, takes place. None of its 53 staff has indicated a willingness to move to the new location.

The concerns are outlined in decentralisation implementation plans, some of which were published yesterday and others provided to The Irish Times on request.

Each organisation selected for decentralisation was required to prepare such a plan for the implementation group chaired by Mr Phil Flynn.

The NRA says decentralisation of its staff and operations to Ballinasloe, Co Galway, could cause significant "corporate memory loss", the seriousness of which "must not be underestimated".

"The opinion of management is that decentralisation and the consequent potential loss of expertise, will render the authority unable to deliver on the national roads programme until such time as suitably qualified personnel, particularly in the technical area, are recruited and trained." The plan makes clear, however, that finding such personnel will not be easy. Replacing senior project managers is likely to prove particularly difficult.

As well as highlighting the impact on service delivery, several agencies claim that decentralisation will impose significant extra costs.

The Probation and Welfare Service, which is to be moved to Navan, Co Meath, says officers will have to travel to Dublin regularly for court duty and to interview clients. It is one of several organisations which says it will have to maintain facilities in Dublin if it is to operate effectively.

The Equality Authority says additional costs are likely to arise in a range of areas, including maintenance of a Dublin office and salaries while new staff are familiarising themselves with its work by overlapping with existing staff.

Its most serious concerns, however, arise from the potential loss of experienced personnel.

It took staff "a considerable amount of time", it says, for staff to become skilled in specialist areas such as information dissemination and legal case management. "Disruption of the delivery of these functions or the loss of skills in these areas may leave us open to the risk of court action."

cyclopath2001

One principal aim of the relocation scheme is to move Civil Serfs from Dublin and re-educate them in politically correct rural areas. The 'Dublin Mindset' is an enemy of the state.

To accomplish this, we must all 'Make a Great Leap Forward'.

This scheme is in the style of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but with less shooting.

This explains why no indication has been given about tax increases to fund it or closures of services has been given.

luckat

I'd love to decentralise! Give me a home where the Charolais roam.

uncivilservant

Originally posted by cyclopath2001
This scheme is in the style of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but with less shooting.

All in good time.

This explains why no indication has been given about tax increases to fund it or closures of services has been given.

Perhaps someone needs to ask how much the acquisition of all these new properties will cost first?

ishmael whale

http://breaking.examiner.ie/2004/07/21/story158001.html

“Decentralisation 'should be scrapped'
21/07/2004 - 09:09:09

The Government should abandon decentralisation plans when Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy takes up his new role as European Commissioner, it was claimed today.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said Mr McCreevy’s departure provided the perfect opportunity to shelve plans to force thousands of public servants out of Dublin.

Mr Rabbitte said the decentralisation scheme was damaging and unworkable and called on the Government to halt the plan..........”

Is it too much to hope that they might abandon it? Parlon’s recent speech (http://www.uncivilservant.com/article.php?id=144) is notable for managing to come up with no purpose for the scheme other that to assert that decentralisation is necessary for regional development. He says “In reality, no-one is pulling back from this analysis”, a statement which seems to ignore even the existence of the National Spatial Strategy. The NSS suggests regional concentration rather than decentralisation is what is required. The NSS also envisages the development of real facilities in regional locations, not building an office to accommodate some amputated piece of central government.

The rest of his speech is an unsuccessful attempt to suggest that the programme won’t do too much damage. He says that 2,600 civil servants working in Dublin want to move either to the new or existing regional offices and 2,200 civil servants already working outside Dublin are interested in the new locations. In other words only 400 net posts can be filled and, as we know, the places closest to Dublin are the ones attracting the interest.

He mentions a Department of Social and Family Affairs rationalisation initiative as an example of effective decentralisation. It involves integration of the civil registration programme, the public service identity at birth service and the processing of Child Benefit claims. He breathlessly says “And all that happens right here in Donegal, despite the fact that the majority of births take place in the capital.” A number of questions arise from this. Why bother doing this in Donegal if most births are in the capital? What advantage comes from doing this in Donegal (i.e. it may be technically feasible to do this in Donegal but why bother)? And where does this leave the forty jobs in the General Register Office decentralised to Roscommon? Decentralisation removes any political incentive for achieving public sector efficiency.

Of course the proposed programme does not just involve operational areas like this. It also includes policy making functions. Parlon comments that senior civil servants based in the Capital do not have regular face-to-face contact. If this is true its seems to be an attempt to pretend a failure is a virtue. Government should be co-ordinated. Decentralisation makes it harder.

He trails on to the usual verbals about communications technologies, including the mandatory reference to videoconferencing. My picture of videoconferencing was that it offered a way for organisations to communicate where, of necessity, they had locations all over a country or, indeed, all over the world. The idea that you would take people in the one location and scatter them just so you could give videoconferencing a spin seems somewhat novel.

He comments that Ireland is a small country, and that vast distances are not involved (but ignores that the programme involves scattering offices from one location to many). However, this cuts both ways. Ireland is small, so locating central government offices in the capital (which is, after all, where you would expect them to be) is no great hardship. Why waste money moving from a perfectly good location? For the craic? Why scatter offices all over the place and give ourselves the cost structure of a large country?

cdebru

i have not read all the posts on this thread so forgive me if i am repeating someone elses post
but can i ask a question/ make a suggestion

why not decentralise to the suburbs of dublin
there are plenty of empty buildings offices
on the northside the gateway factory motorola in swords

i'am sure there is similar on the southside and out in the west
surely this would not only reduce the traffic into the city centre
as the suburbs are where the civil servants are living
perhaps there could be some movement so the civil servants on the southside move to departments on southside etc

as well as that it would keep departments fairly close to the seat of government
and to their respective ministers
rather than end up with the minister in dublin on dail business but his department and department head 150 miles away

it would also put money and jobs back into parts of dublin that have suffered big job losses in the last couple of years

iam not totally against decentralisation but at the moment the current plan is going to cost a fortune with 7500 civil servants in dublin garaunteed a job but no job for them to do

cyclopath2001

>>why not decentralise to the suburbs of dublin

This could be easier to achieve than the current mad scheme, but it would still cause difficulties for people living on the opposite side of the city from a suburban office. For example, a specialist from Tallaght might find a commute to Swords just as unnacceptable as finding that his/her job has been sent to Mayo.

Also, the original government intention was to take jobs from Dublin and give them to country towns, making them far enough away from Dublin that people would be forced to sell their houses. The government would make a lot of tax on this. The tax would then go to pay for the cost of the scheme. The staff would have made a small profit on the Dublin/country differential and would not notice the government's take on the deal.

Another objective is to re-educate people who are affilicted with the 'Dublin Mindset'.

ishmael whale

Like many people, I’ve been trying to find some indication of what a ‘Dublin mindset’ is, the better to understand the necessity to move away from it.
I’ve queried Google and, from what I can gather, the Dublin mindset means a failure to understand that the only similarity between hurling and football is that they are both organised by the GAA. As a result, coaches throughout the city need to get away from the futility and drudgery of isolated physical training and focus on fitness through hurling skill performance.

http://www.gaelicgazette.com/dublinhurlingsymposium.htm

This is the only reference I can find to the ‘Dublin mindset’ outside of the context of the Government’s proposed relocation of offices. From what I can gather from official statements (such as the link below) a ‘Dublin mindset’ seems to involve an unwillingness to move away from a reliance on face-to-face meetings and to embrace the full potential of new technology such video conferencing.

What is it about video conferencing that makes its integration into public administration so vital?

http://www.insidegovernment.ie/htm/news/coverstory.htm

cdebru

This could be easier to achieve than the current mad scheme, but it would still cause difficulties for people living on the opposite side of the city from a suburban office. For example, a specialist from Tallaght might find a commute to Swords just as unnacceptable as finding that his/her job has been sent to Mayo

accepted however it is unlikely to upset as many civil servants as the current scheme
with the proposed extension of the luas a commute from tallaght to swords may not be as unacceptable ( tongue firmly in cheek)
and the m50 links both places and all other suburbs

the only plan behind the current scheme would seem to be to garner more rural votes for ff/pd
without much tought as to how it will affect individual civil servants or the proper running of government

cyclopath2001

>>What is it about video conferencing that makes its integration into public administration so vital? <<

The lucrative contracts for the hardware and bandwidth providers.

ishmael whale

Worrying evidence of an outbreak of 'Dublin mindset' in Waterford.

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sgNJNI7c15IfgsgTbBP-2fa91M.asp

23/07/04
Who is being served by decentralisation?

IT may require a leap of the imagination, but I thought the whole purpose of decentralisation was to improve ‘public service,’ as well as letting residents of the capital know there is life beyond Dublin. (‘Into the West,’ Irish Examiner, July 9).

With reference to the term ‘public service,’ two questions spring to mind.

1. At what stage were we the humble taxpaying ‘public’ consulted on this issue?

2. Judging by the frequent non-communication and lack of policy consultation between government departments - for example, Justice, Health and Transport - while administrating from the same town, how in heaven’s name could there be anything but a deterioration of ‘service’ if state bodies were scattered to every God-forsaken, desolate spot with non-existent or archaic infrastructural and communications systems?

The mind boggles.

Kevin Jordan
Village View
Clashmore
Co Waterford

Cork

If you were working for a supermarket, bank or private company - you are liable to be transferred at any given time.

Civil Servants are there to serve the people of this country.

They are civil servants. Why do they expect that the location of their jobs won't change?

Will further benchmarking payments be required to overcome this inflexability?

It is a pity that people in the private sector don't get similar treatment.

cyclopath2001

>>If you were working for a supermarket, bank or private company - you are liable to be transferred at any given time.<<

But a private company would move staff or offices for reasons of good business?

The current relocation scheme is not 'good business'.

>>It is a pity that people in the private sector don't get similar treatment.>>

They do, but it depends on who your work for.

luckat

Eircom used to have an enclave of Dubliners in Sligo; they'd been posted to Sligo and liked it so much that they gripped on to the jobs there and stayed.

What on earth is the use of the whole population sliding over to the east until the whole country tips into the sea?

A few years ago we were hearing about the wonders of teleworking. Decentralisation will have all the same advantates: less commuting, cheaper house prices, etc.

And even the schools are an advantage. In Dublin you're lucky to get a kid into a school with under 30 in a class; in many parts of the country a kid can get real personal attention in small classes with dedicated teachers.

In Kilbaha in Clare a local sculptor has been working for years to bring Dubliners on the dole to live around the west coast; he said about 15 years ago that one dole family could bring £2,000 a year into a local economy - apart from the spending money, there were also visitors staying in B&Bs and spending in the shops, etc. And if that's so of people on the dole, how much better to have people with jobs and incomes coming into a country area.

Not to mention the fact that the civil service might lose its Dublin-centred mindset and realise that there's a whole country, not just one city, in it.

cyclopath2001

>>Eircom used to have an enclave of Dubliners in Sligo; they'd been posted to Sligo and liked it so much that they gripped on to the jobs there and stayed.
<<

The difference on this occasion is that there has been no credible business case made for the scheme and the staff who are being targetted do not want to go.

This isn't the Chinese Cultural Revolution.