Deputy Wilson has applied for and been given permission to raise on the Adjournment the question of the Government decision to cancel the decentralisation of the Department of Agriculture to Cavan town. Deputy Wilson has 20 minutes.
Adjournment Debate. - Decentralisation of Government Department.
I thank you, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to raise this very important matter on the Adjournment even at this late hour of the night. However, the Chair will admit that I have been persistent in trying to get this debate on the Adjournment, and if I am inconveniencing anybody I apologise.
I would like to call the attention of the House to the generally accepted principle that in a nation such as ours decentralisation is a desirable objective. The density of population around the capital city is very high. About 30 per cent of the population of this country is in the Dublin region, and any deliberate scheme of Government which rectifies this imbalance is good for the body politic and healthy for the nation as a whole.
I would like to recap what happened with regard to the policy of decentralisation of Government offices. In October 1980 the then Minister for the Public Service announced his programme for decentralisation. The programme had been discussed and debated thoroughly in Government over a long period, and among the decisions taken was one that a section of the Department of Agriculture would be decentralised to Cavan town. This was part of a large programme of decentralisation which is not immediately my concern, although I want to indicate that what we are discussing tonight was merely part of an overall pattern of policy which was decided by the Government. Cavan was one of the designated centres then for decentralisation. We made rapid and substantial progress with regard to that decentralisation, on site acquisition, planning and design between October 1980 when the scheme was announced and June 1981. A sum of money was paid to Cavan County Council for the site, which was at the back of the courthouse in that town. I regret to say that since the Government decision to discontinue the project was taken that money is no longer regarded as a deposit on the site but Cavan County Council have been told that they can retain the money. Plans and contract documents were available for invitation of tenders for an access road to the site in Cavan, to be followed by work on the offices proper. When the Coalition Government came to office they put the programme under review — those were the terms used. It was a euphemism for giving it a general anaesthetic. The matter was dormant for a while and now apparently it is dead. It was dormant throughout the first period of coalition.
We put down a motion in December 1981 trying to probe the mind of the then Minister for Finance on this matter. It was discussed fully here. Various Deputies from this side of the House contributed to the debate as did Deputy Bruton, then Minister for Finance, and Deputy Barry Desmond, now Minister for Health and Social Welfare, then Deputy Bruton's co-adjutant. As soon as the Fianna Fáil Government came back to office one of their first decisions was to reinstate that programme of decentralisation. We had the privilege of a visit from the Minister of State at the Department of the Public Service at that time, Deputy Calleary, who is present in the House now. He came to view the site for the proposed new offices. He visited the site and traversed it. Some local politicians have mentioned inaccurately that there was a sod-turning ceremony. That was not the purpose of the visit of the Minister of State then. The whole decentralisation programme as far as Cavan town was concerned was under way. The various arguments that we advanced at that time, and still maintain have full validity, were that if that office space had to be provided for various civil servants it would be less expensive to provide it in provincial towns than in the capital city. We had told the unions concerned that full consultations would take place and, of course, that the transfer would be by agreement. The point was made in Government in this House at various times that a feature of the civil service for some time has been the desire of various officers in the various Departments to get a transfer from the capital city to the nearest provincial town where public offices are located. Every Member of this House and, I am sure, every member of the Government, including the present Minister for Finance, Deputy Dukes, must know that that is so. The last time we debated this matter in this House Deputy J. Bruton also realised and admitted it. There was talk at that time of the possibility of privatisation, and I threw down a challenge in this House to Deputy Bruton when he was Minister for Finance, that if he had the courage to go ahead with this decentralisation then lack of money should not inhibit him from doing so.
On a philosophical level various arguments have been put forward over the years with regard to the desirability of decentralisation. The Irish Times of 23 November 1981 published an article by Dr. Michael Bannon of UCD in which he stated: “In the absence of a coherent decentralisation policy new technologies will serve to reinforce the dominance of Dublin and perpetuate regional disparities, according to the author of a recent NESC report on problems of growth and decay in the Dublin area”. Dr. Bannon said that the present highly centralised Government bureaucracy should be dismantled in favour of strong urban-centred regional units where public sector decision-making could be relocated. The decentralisation of private companies should also be encouraged. He said that careful and detailed planning would be necessary if they were to prove socially desirable. He suggested that the capacity of a region to innovate, attract investment and generate self-sustaining growth was hampered by loss of leadership to the Dublin area.
That thesis could be sustained in argument and debate in any instance. Other people who strongly advocated decentralisation at various times and who have experience in public administration beyond what anybody else either in this House or outside could claim — for example Dr. Barrington — also claimed that it was essential to have a decentralisation policy in a country such as this. I maintain that Dr. Barrington's thesis is incontrovertible. As I have mentioned already, 30 per cent of the population is now in the Dublin area and this, as has been pointed out over and over again, is higher than the percentage of the total population of the UK concentrated on London. This is higher than the percentage of population of Japan centred on Tokyo. We cannot afford to allow the east coast to become top heavy at the expense of the rest of the country. The fact that so many public servants are anxious to get back to their own areas is an indication of the change that has taken place in rural Ireland in the past few decades with improved amenities, educational facilities and the other things that make life worth living and improve the quality of life in a rural situation.
I will refer to the situation of Cavan town with regard to public offices. There is a basic injustice here which has developed during the years and which is a legacy of the kind of development we had in the past. For example, the IDA office for the area is in Dundalk, practically on the County Down border. The North Eastern Regional Development Organisation which covers County Cavan have not got headquarters in Cavan. The income tax office for the area is in Dundalk. These offices provide employment for people and enrich the towns in which they are situated. Cavan was chosen by Buchanan as a development centre for Counties Monaghan, Longford and Cavan. These areas have not had the advantage of having these kinds of offices located in their areas. The Army headquarters for the region are in Dundalk. I am tired telling the House that the Great Northern Railways and CIE met in Cavan town but that has also been discontinued. When the headquarters for the North Eastern Health Board were established they were located at Ceannanus Mór in County Meath. I am giving these examples to indicate how important to me it was from a developmental point of view that the offices of the Department of Agriculture should have been located in Cavan town, as we had determined when we were in office.
At that time I considered it was important for the construction industry that this development should take place. If that were true in 1981, it is a hundred times more true today. The statistics available from the Central Statistics Office indicate that unemployment in the construction industry is much greater now than it was then. I do not know the precise figure, but it is between 40,000 and 50,000 for the country as a whole. The construction industry brings work to people in the fastest time. I do not have to elaborate on that as far as Cavan town is concerned. If the 150 civil servants were transferred to the area and if the proposed building catered for other employees of the Department of Agriculture, the total number of people housed in the same building would be 230. It is important to realise what would happen to a town like that if we had that increase in strength. We were hoping for the development of a military barracks, but that is in cold storage. A Garda headquarters was mentioned, but all our hopes have been dashed by this Government decision not to proceed with decentralisation for the Department of Agriculture.
From my point of view one of the important aspects is that there would be a massive injection of human resources into the town and this would have a revolutionary effect on the town. There are over 7,000 people on the draft register of electors for Cavan town. This place is capable of development and is crying out for it. I accuse the Government of going cold about decentralisation in respect of Cavan. This happened when they were in Government in the period June 1981 to January 1982. The then Minister for Finance, Deputy Bruton, would not say straight out that he was shelving the project but at that time he was laying his cold hand on it. That cold and clammy hand has become a bit of a nightmare for me.
This injection of human resources would help Cavan town, which has a great tradition. The hospital is also a matter of concern. I will not deal with it now, but all the delay has been a cause of great concern to the people. A transfer of people by way of decentratisation would have social and cultural effects. It would improve the quality of life in an area where we have certain strengths as well as the weakness of under-development. There is a fine social life in the area and a tradition in drama development. The Ceann Comhairle was instrumental in developing the Cavan Drama Festival, which is one of the oldest in the country. In fact, we have two festivals there. We have a fine arts society, and the urban council and county council give support in this area.
This new injection into the town would bring increasingly sophisticated demands from people working in the Department of Agriculture, and this would improve the town.
I appeal to the Minister for Finance to reconsider the whole decentralisation plan. I am interested specifically in the Cavan project, but there are also projects for Ballina, Letterkenny and Sligo. The Minister can study those in his own time. A deposit has been made on a site and is likely to be lost if the scheme is not proceeded with. Skilled construction workers are ready to go into action and we want to see the town becoming a centre for development once more. As the Minister knows, it has already suffered from being in such close proximity to the Border, so I appeal very strongly to him to reconsider his decision.
I am very glad to hear Deputy Wilson outlining the history and development of the dramatic arts in Cavan. I have never had any doubt that there is a strong, vibrant and living tradition of those arts in Cavan.
Deputy Wilson made a statement to the effect that decentralisation is a desirable objective and, if you speak about it in a general way, very few people would disagree. When you come to look at its specific application, however, it is rather different. I was interested to hear Deputy Wilson referring to the Buchanan Report, which was a series of suggestions which had a very strong concern with decentralisation in a controlled way which did not seem to get public support because it did not spread things far enough. We should not lose sight of this problem, which is relevant to our consideration of Deputy Wilson's concern. What he said about the results of the concentration of populations on the quality of life both in over and under populated areas are things with which I and many others agree, and we can all see the ill effects of both situations. The question arises whether the decentralisation programme which was proposed would have made any great difference to that. What would have been the net difference, if any, created in terms of overall employment, economic activity or any of the wider measures arising from the proposals? It is important to get this problem into perspective.
Deputy Wilson made a fairly dramatic case for his own interests and, listening to him and others who have made the same arguments, one gets the impression that we have a very highly centralised public service. In fact, some 60 per cent of our public service work outside Dublin——
Does that include the gardaí and teachers?
That includes the postal and telecommunications services as well as gardaí, teachers and others. We do not have the huge degree of concentration of the public service to which Deputy Wilson referred. However, I have sympathy for the idea of decentralisation, having been decentralised myself from Dublin to Brussels and from Brussels to Kildare and being one of a family of Dubliners who have reversed the tradition in that three of four of my parents' children moved out of Dublin to other parts of the country instead of the other way around.
Was the Minister's family associated with drama?
No, not at all, Deputy. However, I have been involved in a personal way with decentralisation, and we must look at what it would cost and some of the other factors to which I have referred. The decentralisation programme would have cost a further £45 million, and that was a material consideration which had to be taken into account. It was one of the main factors which led to our decision not to go ahead with this programme. We also have to ask whether the programme which was intended to decentralise about 3,000 civil servants from their jobs in Dublin to the same jobs in other places was worth the money or was an urgent priority for the country as a whole. Deputy Wilson did not refer to the costs except to make a claim about privatisation to which I will refer in a moment.
I am not disputing the undoubted financial and social benefits which would accrue from a movement like this to the 12 centres involved, but there would have been no net gain to the economy. There would have been no permanent extra job creation, and we decided that the sum of £45 million was too high a price to pay for such a programme in the present recession when it is incumbent on us to alleviate, as far as we can, the weight of the public sector and the economy of the regions about which Deputy Wilson and many others are properly concerned.
If decentralisation had been proceeded with there would not have been any new job creation in the centres concerned, because we would have been transferring civil servants from jobs in Dublin to centres for which they had applied. Administrative efficiency would also be a concern in looking at a programme like this, and I know we are all concerned with improving the efficiency of our public administration and public service generally. I believe that if we had gone ahead with this programme the efficiency of the Departments would have been reduced——
The Minister's predecessor said that but I do not believe it.
I have some personal experience of this from my time in office as Minister for Agriculture. Administration in several different centres of a central Department is slow, inefficient and costly.
How do they manage in Brussels?
Brussels does not have decentralised Departments in the other member states, and one of the major headaches in the central administration of the European Community is the fact that it has a large body of people in Luxembourg. One of the main problems of the European Parliament is that it has its offices in one place and meets in another. That is decentralisation turned into a nightmare for the people involved. If we had gone ahead with decentralisation of the Department of Agriculture it would, I regret to say, have been to Castlebar, not Cavan, which would have administrative sense as part of that Department was already in Castlebar.
It has been suggested that the cost to the State would have been less under privatisation schemes. In fact, an analysis of the comparative cost of the State building its own office accommodation or leasing under the privatisation proposals showed very clearly that the privatisation proposals would have involved a higher cost to the State, and the figures are here.
I do not believe those figures.
That is the conclusion of a study which was carried out by the Office of Public Works.
I do not believe it.
It is not enough for the Deputy to say he does not believe it. The cost would have been higher, and it is for that reason that we have decided not to go ahead with the decentralisation scheme.
The Minister mentioned a figure of £45 million. What period does that cover?
Over the lifetime of the development of the project.
The Dáil adjourned at 12.30 a.m. on Thursday, 15 December 1983, until 10.30 a.m.