In Waterford there is a very strong impression now that we are being conned in terms of any serious intent on the Government's part to decentralise a Government Department to Waterford. I have raised this matter a number of times in the House during the past 12 months, and in a recent question which I had down to the Minister on 1 November, I stated that the Government earlier this year had contacted Telecom Éireann to identify sections within their organisation for transfer to Waterford and requested that the Government decision would be followed through by taking the necessary steps for such transfer of staff.
Recently a letter was sent by J. Joyce, an executive director of Telecom Éireann to the Mayor of Waterford on this very issue, and I quote:
With reference to your recent letter to Dr. Michael Smurfit, the position is that Telecom Éireann has for some years been pursuing a policy of decentralising management and operation of the service and dispersing staff close to the customer. Pursuant to that policy, staff and operations have been relocated from Dublin to provincial centres throughout the country. At the same time, technological developments have resulted in the Company's overall staff numbers reducing from 18,270 at our vesting in 1984 to 13,700 now. The prospects are for further significant overall staff reductions over the next few years. At this stage, Telecom has no current proposals for transfer of staff to Waterford.
The other issue which is relevant here is the powers the Minister has under the Postal and Telecomunications Services Act, 1983, Part VII of which provides that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs — who obviously is the Minister for Communications — may issue directions in writing to either company requiring that the company comply with policy decisions of a general kind made by the Government concerning the development of postal or telecommunications services of which he may advise the company from time to time. I have taken counsel's opinion on that and the advice I received was that the Minister has powers in a general way in regard to policy but he has not got specific powers. In other words, he has not the powers to instruct or compel Telecom Éireann to decentralise part of their staff to Waterford. Therefore, I believe this business of transferring part of the BTE operation to Waterford is just a red herring the Government are using to give the impression they are doing something about decentralisation when, in fact, they are not.
Dr. Michael Bannon did a survey some years ago which showed that Waterford was very deficient in the service sector and the 400 jobs that were promised to Waterford would be very important at that time. A shopping development is going on in the centre of Waterford at the moment. It is a very large development, something of the order of £18 million. A decentralisation to Waterford would have a big effect on the time of completion of that development.
I am asking the Minister this evening to come clean about this. All the evidence and information available show that BTE have no intention of decentralising any part of their staff to Waterford. Furthermore, the Minister would not seem to have the powers to instruct them to do so but if he has such powers, he should use them quickly. Waterford Corporation paid £100,000 for a site of three acres which was part of a five acre site previously purchased by the Board of Works to implement the previous decision of decentralising the then Department of Posts and Telegraphs to Waterford.
We have had enough messing about. I accuse the Minister and the Government of going on and on with this red herring when they know as well as I do that there is absolutely no prospect of this coming to Waterford. The Minister must tell us the truth, come out front about it. If he has the powers to direct BTE to do this, let him use those powers but let us not be going on and on in this ridiculous way when he and his Government have no intention of facilitating the people of Waterford.
