Reply To: O’Brasilia

I entirely agree notjim Dublin should strive to be an important World City in terms of influence within the chosen fields

Where Dublin is doing well appears to be in attracting small projects at the higher end of the employment scale. The number of projects employing more than 500 people attracted to Dublin in the last 3 years can be counted on one hand.

Without doubt Dublin is the most important IT city in Europe and out performs in Pharma. It is building a viable Financial services sector but is still a long way behind London and Luxembourg.

With average salaries in these sectors exceeding 50k for experienced professionals it is clear that other employees are finding it difficult to maintain a decent standard of living.

Particularly affected are Civil Servants who generally got paid less than the private sector rate for an equal job (not saying all of them worked equally hard) But the reality is that if standards slip in the Civil Service the platform for industry is damaged.

Decentralisation is a good policy in theory as it relieves some of the pressure on Dublin by freeing up some existing capicity for the private sector in areas such as housing, schools and roads.

Where I think Dr Walsh is right is that you cannot govern a country from 53 seperate locations, there is too much interconnectivity, and as for e-commerce solutions, they form only part of a wider strategy.

One or two locations at most are viable, but if a second location is to be chosen it must be capable of providing a counter weight to Dublin without overheating any of the other major settlements such as Cork or Galway.

What should really be done is that the existing 53 location plan should be scrapped so that proper research can be conducted into the effects of decentralisation on the civil service.