I thank you for giving me the opportunity to raise this important matter this evening. In outlining the background to the decentralisation of Government offices to Kilkenny it is worth recalling that following the 1991 budget the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Reynolds, now Taoiseach, announced that 120 civil servants would be relocated from the inland fisheries section of the Department of the Marine and the Companies Office in the Department of Industry and Commerce, in Kilkenny city. This was welcome news for those living in Kilkenny city and surrounding areas.
At the time and even today there is a great temptation for public representatives and the Kilkenny local authorities to be critical of the Industrial Development Authority and its attempts to achieve results in terms of locating manufacturing industry in the Purcellsinch industrial estate following the demise of the Fieldcrest plant some years ago. There are 80,000 square feet vacant at present and I take this opportunity to urge the Government and the Minister for Enterprise and Employment to make every possible effort to locate manufacturing industry in Kilkenny at the earliest possible opportunity.
In the absence of that, it came as a great source of encouragement to the people of the area to know that the Government was including Kilkenny city in its decentralisation programme. In the run up to the local elections of 1991 the Minister for Finance of the time, Deputy Reynolds, must have been tempted to make such an announcement. He did so with a great fanfare of publicity from the local Fianna Fáil public representatives of the day.
The local authority in question, Kilkenny Corporation, set about getting a site appropriate to the needs of the Office of Public Works to provide this very important facility. A site at Hebron Road, Kilkenny, which was originally earmarked by Kilkenny Corporation for housing development, was swapped with another site to facilitate the decentralisation of Government offices. To date existing local Civil Service staff have come together on this site at Hebron Road, as part of phase 1, for housing, tax, social welfare and agriculture services. These are provided in the new Government offices which were opened during the November 1992 General Election. It was a premature opening — the Minister for Finance of the day, Deputy Reynolds, happened to be campaigning in the area at that time.
I have repeatedly sought assurances from the Government that the decentralisation programme was on track. On 12 October 1993 I asked the Minister for Finance in the Dáil if he would indicate when work would commence on building these new offices in Kilkenny and he told me that it was planned that building work would commence in the following spring. It was certainly a surprise to me when I learned that there was very little interest on the part of civil servants in Dublin in relocating to Kilkenny. I understand from my contacts in the personnel sections that to date 25 out of 120 civil servants have indicated their interest in relocating to Kilkenny city. This is a serious disappointment to me. It will be an even greater disappointment to the people of Kilkenny if, because of lack of interest or lack of resources on the part of the Government to encourage civil servants to relocate to Kilkenny, the decentralisation programme comes off the rail.
In the absence of the Minister for Finance, I ask the Minister for Education to clarify when work will commence on building these new offices in Kilkenny city and what progress has been made in relocating civil servants from the Government Departments I have mentioned to Kilkenny city. I ask the Minister to allay the fears of the people of Kilkenny, who have looked forward to this injection of finance into the local economy and the injection of spending power that the relocation of 120 civil servants would give to the Kilkenny area, which needs job creation.
