Vol. 576 No. 6
8 Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin asked the Minister for Finance the formula used for selection, the timescale and full estimated cost of implementation of the decentralisation programme announced by him in budget 2004. [30193/03]
9 Mr. P. McGrath asked the Minister for Finance the proportion of the proposed decentralisation which is going to towns designated as hubs or gateways in the national spatial strategy; the gross cost of property acquisition and other costs of the decentralisation programme; and if he has established a critical path analysis for the implementation process. [30455/03]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 8 and 9 together.
I refer the Deputies to the summary of the 2004 budget measures which sets out the wide range of factors taken into account in selecting Departments and agencies for decentralisation and locations for the new decentralised offices. I am determined that action is taken immediately to start implementing the decentralisation programme.
I have appointed an implementation committee to drive the process forward and a joint Department of Finance and Office of Public Works unit is being established to support the implementation committee and to liaise with Departments involved. The committee has been asked to provide a detailed implementation plan by the end of March 2004. The chairman of the committee will report to the Cabinet sub-committee on decentralisation, which comprises the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and the Ministers for Finance and the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
Each Minister is expected to take responsibility for that part of the programme which relates to his or her Department, including the agencies which come within his or her remit. In order to ensure that the programme can proceed without delay, I have provided an additional €20 million in my Department's Vote to meet any up-front investment required in 2004. Any capital funding requirements for future years will be dealt with within the overall five-year capital allocation framework announced in the budget. However, the costs of new accommodation in the regions can be minimised by vacating existing leased or State-owned property. The overall objective will be to ensure that property being acquired at regional level is matched over time in cost terms by disposal of property held in the Dublin region.
As the programme will operate on a voluntary basis, there will be no question of paying removal or relocation expenses or redundancy payments. Some additional costs are likely to arise under headings such as travel and subsistence, staff training and technology. However, the decentralisation programme can also be expected to generate cost savings due to reduced absenteeism, reduced staff turnover and generally increased productivity. The wider economic benefits, the better use of regional infrastructure and reduced demand on infrastructure in Dublin also need to be taken into account.
The Government had to take account of and balance a wide range of factors in selecting suitable locations for the new decentralisation programme which I announced on budget day. One of these was the need to achieve a fit with the national spatial strategy. Some 2,650 jobs of the 9,000 jobs in respect of which decisions have already been made are moving to gateways and hubs identified in the national spatial strategy. With six of the hubs identified under the national spatial strategy benefiting from the new decentralisation programme and two of the remainder already having decentralised offices, the hubs are offered the opportunity to build on the key role envisaged for them under the national spatial strategy.
The strategy also envisaged that county towns and other medium-sized towns, especially those which are strategically placed in a regional context, would have roles to play in acting as "local capitals", developing their service functions and providing opportunities for a diversifying employment base and productivity growth, both in the towns and in related smaller towns, villages and rural areas. Almost all the locations included in the programme are explicitly mentioned in section 4 of the national spatial strategy which outlines how each region will participate in the strategy. The relocation of public service employment to towns such as these underpins the important role, which many of them must continue to play into the future.
I am pleased that my continual lobbying of the Minister for Finance in recent years on decentralisation has borne some fruit.
I needed a hand.
Well done.
On the previous occasion I raised this issue in the House, the Minister responded by saying: "I would have liked to progress the matter sooner, but a great deal of consultation—
Quotations are not in order during Question Time.
—and work has been put into this area." What was the extent of the consultation within the Civil Service to which the Minister referred on that occasion? Does he recognise that much surprise and puzzlement has been expressed by many civil servants at the announcement, timing and extent of the decentralisation proposed? Did the consultation involve the proposed location of the various Departments and agencies?
Given that this is a voluntary decentralisation for civil and public servants, was an extensive survey carried out among those concerned to ascertain how many would be willing to move? If not, how can the Minister propose to carry out this project, including moving whole Departments, within three years if he does not have the exact figures of how many will volunteer to relocate? What other formula, if any, was used for the selection of locations, especially given that many of the designated hub towns, despite the Minister's response, were ignored or given quite derisory numbers of employees for those sections of Departments they are to receive.
The Parlon formula.
It has not yet been determined where many sections of Departments will be located, especially those relating to information technology. Would the Minister be prepared to acknowledge that Monaghan town is an ideal location for information technology sections of many Departments, specifically the IT section in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which employs 225 people? The county already hosts two of the pertinent elements from that Department and has a well developed IT sector and a strongly supportive local authority seeking to develop in that way and also on a cross-Border basis.
As I pointed out in interviews on this matter, this decision was originally announced in December 1999. Four years later to the day I announced the locations to host these Departments. This was not a short period. We could have suggested that we consult for 100 years. I suppose I should have set up task forces, high-level groups, cross-departmental teams, review bodies, partnership groups, consultants, evaluation committees and parliamentary committees along with spatial strategy and various other bodies to keep this going.
The Government has employed all of them.
The Government sets them up but they do nothing.
In the four years we consulted trade unions, one of which made a detailed submission which was taken into account. The Secretaries General met and wrote a report. We received submissions on behalf of every town and village in the country from local authorities and chambers of commerce. I heard concerns from Deputies and Senators from all parties over a long period. We then made the decision.
While it is not unusual for politicians to want to have their cake and eat it, in this case it is true of others as well. For four years we were criticised for making no decision and we are now criticised for making the decision. This is not confined to Members of these Houses. Some sections of the media seem to want to have their cake and eat it and seem to be more concerned that they did not know about it.
My colleague and friend Deputy Durkan could not escape chuckling when Deputy Ó Caoláin asked why we did not consult other people before the decision. Can Deputies imagine what would have happened if certain people had known this was about to take place? Can Deputies imagine the goings-on among Deputies, Senators, local authorities and chambers of commerce? The great example of my colleague from Laoighis-Offaly would be in the halfpenny place and this would have happened throughout the country.
The Parlon method.
Can Deputies imagine what would have happened had we consulted widely within the Government system. Those who have been in Government, such as Deputy Richard Bruton and Deputy Durkan, know what would have happened then. We had four years to consider everything and then we decided.
Ireland is a small country. This is not in the same category as putting a man on the moon, the invention of the wheel or conquering the North Pole. In my budget speech last week, I said this would help change the formulation of policy in years ahead by getting away from a Dublin mindset.
It will change to the Parlon mindset.
In the past week we have seen a considerable degree of the Dublin mindset suggesting it would not be possible to run the country from outside Dublin. This shows considerable arrogance to the people. The real Dublin people seem to have less difficulty with decentralisation than those who came to Dublin 25 or 30 years ago and decided to settle here, including those eminent in certain parts of the media. They obviously do not go home that often or, if they do, they do not know how Ireland has changed in the past ten to 15 years. Ireland will be well able to handle this.
We expect multinationals with offices of hundreds or thousands of employees and sales greater then Ireland's gross national product to locate here and be able to conduct their operations from California to Hong Kong, yet we cannot expect this to be done by an Irish organisation. At a press conference last week, I said Ireland was such a small place that I would expect Tiger Woods to go around it in about 67 shots on a reasonably good day. This will bring balanced regional development and will work well.
As Deputy Ó Caoláin correctly noted, the documentation contains information that 835 information technology jobs were withheld in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Revenue Commissioners, the Local Government Services Board and the Department of Finance. In order to allow the committee to decide what best to do, it has been proposed that all of these jobs should be placed in one centre of excellence and made secure. The tax collection and delivery of services systems are even more important than people as they are critical to the entire State. The first action of the commission will be to make suggestions in this area. I will bear in mind the Deputy's comments on the place of which he has reminded me.
May I ask my supplementary question?
There is a time constraint. The question put down by Deputy Paul McGrath is being taken with the question put down by Deputy Ó Caoláin.
Will I be permitted to ask my supplementary after Deputy McGrath?
We are over the time.
I have not got in yet.
I am giving Deputy Paul McGrath his opportunity to ask a supplementary question.
With respect to Deputy McGrath, the time has been taken up by the Minister who did not even reply to the question.
I am somewhat surprised that the Minister is taking this question. I thought it would be the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, as he is the one who seems to have delivered. The Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, deliberated for a great deal of time, but when Deputy Parlon appeared everything was sorted out and put right.
On a serious note, the Minister for Finance failed to respond to the question I put to him on the gross costs of property acquisition and other matters. Why did he not respond? In the preamble to the spatial strategy, the Taoiseach said he sought balanced regional development and a better spread of jobs. He went on to say the Government would ensure development occurred as set out in the spatial strategy. However, the Minister's decentralisation programme provides for jobs in only 12 of the 22 gateway and hub towns mentioned in the strategy. That represents about 55%. The number of jobs provided for the towns the Government said should be developed amount to less than 19% of all the jobs involved.
My goodness.
How can the Minister say his programme is in keeping with the spatial strategy and the concepts set out by the Taoiseach? How can he justify his programme when he has ignored his Government's spatial strategy? Is the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, to throw into the bin his spatial strategy which is only one year old? The Government of which he is a part is taking no cognisance of its contents.
Inside and outside the House, people are talking about the spatial strategy who did not even know it existed until last week.
The Government did not know it existed.
Deputy Paul McGrath has asked me many questions about decentralisation. A question which has often been posed relates to the criteria to be used. I have consistently said there was no one set of criteria and that no town would be excluded by a particular methodology. No particular reasons were set out according to which any other town would be included. I have said that over a period of four years during which time hundreds of parliamentary questions on the matter have been put down. I cannot count the number of times the Minister of State has responded to questions on this matter on the Adjournment. When the spatial strategy was launched, the Government stated that decentralisation would not involve gateways and hubs alone.
I acknowledge that there is a particular level of innocence in the parts of Mayo from which Deputy Rabbitte comes. Yesterday, the Deputy asked the Taoiseach to provide a league table. How would we ever have dealt with decentralisation had I been asked to initiate a consultation process to provide a league table of towns. This process has been difficult enough. Of the jobs allocated last week, about 2,650 have gone to gateway and hub towns. There are already about 2,700 civil servants in decentralised offices in these towns. Nowhere in the spatial strategy does it say that only gateways and hubs would be eligible for decentralised offices.
A question was raised yesterday about a conflict of interest in terms of Deputy Parlon and the code of conduct. The Minister of State could not possibly have breached the code of conduct as he had no hand, act or part in the process of decision making on decentralisation.
Deputy Parlon is on his own now. The Minister is trying to claim credit for his work.
He is getting the back of the hand.
Is he totally innocent?
Order, order.
I regard what has gone on in the constituency of Laoighis-Offaly as a release of the creative tensions resulting from the stresses of multiseat constituency politics. Deputy Parlon could not have broken the code as no Minister of State knew anything about decentralisation good, bad or indifferent.
Was the Minister of State lying to his constituents when he said he had delivered decentralisation?
He was only a mascot.
He made representations.
He was totally innocent. He had nothing to do with it.
Deputy Parlon had nothing to do with the decision.
Why is he there? He is useless.
I understand from sources close to Leinster House that on the Tuesday night before the budget was announced, Deputy Parlon happened to fall into certain company in a hostelry not far from here. Someone cottoned on to the fact that something might happen with decentralisation the next day. That was the extent of the Minister of State's knowledge.
I have never seen the Minister so adrift.
I say the best of luck to the Minister of State. If all Deputies were up as early in the morning, Fianna Fáil would have 98 seats at every general election.
As far as the process was concerned, Deputy Parlon was not involved. He was not involved in the decision making or the preparation. He knew nothing about it and he was as wise as everybody else. He was quicker off the blocks than everybody else. That is the truth of the matter.
Order, please.
In the documentation we have outlined our hope that we will benefit from our Dublin property portfolio. The Office of Public Works pays about €100 million in rent annually for properties in which offices of State reside. The office owns some buildings, but not the majority. It will be possible to make some savings in that regard. As my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, announced last week, it is not expected that the €20 million which has been set aside will be used this year as that is the up-front fund for capital costs.
It is already allocated to other areas.
If one goes to the relevant section of the budget document, one will see that a contingency allocation of €300 million up to €900 million is set out in the multiannual envelopes from 2005 to 2008.
I will allow Deputies Paul McGrath and Ó Caoláin to ask very brief supplementaries.
I appreciate that very much. An issue which has not been raised before involves the army of ancillary workers employed in Dublin in the various Departments which are now up for transfer. What consideration has been given to the employment of ushers, porters and cleaners who are not civil and public servants? They number in the hundreds across Departments. What message do the Minister for Finance and his Cabinet colleagues have about the future employment of this army of ancillary workers?
What is the position in respect of people who harboured an ambition to return to their home counties as civil and public servants but whose Departments are to be transferred to places at an even greater remove than Dublin from their original homes? Does the Minister anticipate a significant increase in transfer requests at all levels within Departments? Has he put in place a transfer arrangement to accommodate what I suspect will be a large number of people?
I have the thin end of the wedge here. Some time ago, the finance committee received a presentation from the decentralisation unit of the Minister's Department. The committee was told the unit had made a presentation to the Minister outlining its recommendations. Can the Minister tell the House if he accepted the recommendations set out in that presentation? Will the Minister outline what changes, if any, were made to them? If changes were made, why did the Minister move away from the original recommendations?
I have a particular interest in the fact that the headquarters of the Department of Education and Science is due to transfer to Mullingar. Are there problems with the listed building on Marlborough Street in which the Department is currently housed? There is also a gaelscoil on the site. Will the transfer of the headquarters to Mullingar be delayed as a consequence of the two matters I have mentioned?
Deputy Ó Caoláin has asked a good question. It was announced last week that 10,300 public servants, approximately 7,000 of whom are civil servants, will be involved in the decentralisation programme. There are approximately 17,000 civil servants in Dublin at present, of whom approximately 10,000 will remain. One of the reasons the Government has taken this decision is evident when one examines a map of Ireland. Large clusters of civil servants are to be found throughout the country. People who decide that they do not want to move to the location to which the Department in which they work is to be decentralised may decide to move to another area where public sector jobs are to be found. Such people will be able to swap Departments, just as people swapped during the previous decentralisation programmes. It will be far easier to organise such swaps during this programme.
One of the reasons we have decided to pursue such a large programme is to provide promotion opportunities to civil servants. It is not fair to send a small division away as an executive officer in such a decentralised division will probably remain at that level for 20 years or more. It will be possible to move within one's Department under the proposed programme, perhaps as far as Secretary General level. Civil servants in decentralised Departments will be close to their colleagues. Deputies are aware that it is easier to drive 15 miles to a country town than it is to Dublin. That is one of the reasons for pursuing this type of programme.
I would like to speak about the ancillary services provided by non-established, or industrial, civil servants. There will continue to be a large number of public servants in Dublin. A large number of offices will remain in the city. I have pointed out on a number of occasions that this is a voluntary programme so there will be no effect in that regard.
In response to Deputy Paul McGrath's question, matters relating to headquarters or offices in other parts of the country are strictly governed by the normal procedures of the Office of Public Works. The Office of Public Works will undertake its normal tendering procedures and will make decisions without an input from me. The Office of Public Works will make decisions as it has always done.
A presentation made to a joint committee has been mentioned. All representations made in recent years were taken into account, as they have always been. I am sure Deputies are aware that a most unusual thing happened in the end – politicians made a decision.
Was the decision made in accordance with the recommendations made to the Minister?
It is funny that the relevant section of the Constitution does not refer to decisions made by anybody else. It does not refer to the groups which were mentioned earlier, such as interdepartmental committees, civil servants and other public bodies.
It used to refer to freedom of information until the Government killed it.
It is not in order for Deputy Bruton to intervene.
The elected representatives of the people are trusted to make such decisions.
Such decisions should be made in keeping with what civil servants say.
The Cabinet made a decision. I think we did a very good job. I apologise to everybody for not having a league table, as Deputy Rabbitte wanted, so that we could have endless discussions. The arguments we would have had in such circumstances would have put Laoighis-Offaly in the ha'penny place.
The Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, has had no league table up to now.
At least Deputy Durkan lives in the real world.
