De-Centralisation
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@RTE wrote:
€105m has been allocated to the Government’s decentralisation programme, down from an original Budget allocation of €155m, but extra spending of €50m will be added to future years.
So the climbdown has begun?
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
PRESS RELEASE
East-on-Water Steering Committee Demands The Opening of the Eastern Fish Corridor
Decades of Government prejudice against the landlocked regions of this country have finally come to and end with the formation of the East-on-Water Community Campaign which demands that the Killybegs Fishing Fleet be decentralised, and that these landlocked regions be given their fair share of the government investment in the marine fishing industry.
Central to this plan is the construction of the Eastern Fish Corridor – a new waterway connecting the Royal and Grand Canals across the Bog of Allen.
East-on-Water demands that the Midlands gets it fair share of the trawlers, fishing crates, lobster pots and nets which Government policy over several decades has concentrated on developing in Donegal while ignoring the enormous potential for larges catches of Minnows, Frogs and Rats in Mid-Eastern Leinster. The construction of the very viable Eastern Fish Corridor represents a sea change in government fisheries policy. It finally puts an end to the “Donegal Mindset”.
The East on Water steering committee has recently issued an expert working report, which outlines the phased opening of the Eastern Fish Corridor.
Phase One: 2006 – First Donegal Trawler is decentralised along with it crew to the pond in Stephens Green.
Phase 2: 2007 – The construction begins on the Eastern Fish Corridor through the bog of Allen to Edenderry – this will coincide with large stocks of live cod, herring and haddock being decentralised from the North Atlantic basin and released into the Royal and Grand Canals.
Phase 3: 2008 – Minister Pat “the Cope†Gallagher is beseeched by the East on Water steering committee to complete the project and decentralises the last of the over congested Donegal fishing fleet to the Midlands.
Phase Four: 2009 – The East on Water committee completely loses interest in fishing and leaves the Irish taxpayers to pick up the bill.
Said Independent TD Paranoid McHysterical of the East-on-Water Steering Committee. “The Eastern Fish Corridor finally gives the landlocked regions of this country a fair share of the Marine Fisheries Industry and makes perfect economic sense. Trawlers will be able to fish in the Midlands and deliver their catch while avoiding the Ballyshannon bottleneck. Decades of Government favouritism towards Donegal has meant that the deprived children of the Midlands have never even seen a deep water fishing trawler and we pay our taxes too and deserve our fair share of the fish pieâ€
ENDS
Can we assume that you have a problem with the reopening of the Western Rail Corridor? A simple to execute, cost effective and viable scheme which will have huge advantages for the region served not least the development of proper commuter services for the rapidly growing cities of Limerick, Galway and eventually Sligo.
Maybe you dont, but your piece (which is pretty funny and fantastically absurdist!) does seem like a bit of a thinly veiled attack on the project!SIPTU members vote for strike action at FÃS
20 March 2006 12:54
SIPTU members at FÃS have voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action over Government plans to decentralise the agency to Birr, Co Offaly.Of the 400 workers at FÃS, 250 are represented by SIPTU and 87% of those have voted for strike action.
The union says that while decentralisation is supposed to be voluntary, pressure to move is being imposed on staff by making promotion dependent on agreement to relocate outside Dublin.
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Workers also complain that they have been given no indication of what will happen to those who choose to stay in Dublin.
The National Executive Council of SIPTU will meet in the next few days to decide on granting sanction for industrial action. If it does so, the union will serve two weeks’ strike notice.
It is expected that initially the workers will stage short intermittent stoppages.
Head of Human Resources at FÃS, Oliver Egan, said management was obliged to implement Government policy, and was prepared to engage with the union as proposed by the Labour Court.
He also warned that unless the issue is resolved, the long-term impact on the decentralisation agenda could be significant.
Any thoughts on this; drip drip or fatal blow?
Thomond Park wrote:Any thoughts on this]
I don’t think it’s possible to strike a fatal blow to a dead man.;)But seriously, I get the impression that this is the first of many. It’s been known for a long time to those who bother to ask such questions that ‘decentralisation’ is a complete shambles. It’s only those who don’t bother to ask, whether through ignorance or because they think they already know the answer, who think that this scheme will prove worthwhile. I don’t doubt the govt’s ability to force it through by whatever underhand method they might choose, but it has disaster writ large all over it.
How many times in how many different ways does it need to be said?Morning strikes at Dublin FÃS offices
05 April 2006 13:52
Around 50 FÃS employees picketed outside the agency’s head quarters on Dublin’s Baggot Street this morning.They are against the Government’s plans to decentralise the agency to Birr, Co Offaly.
Pickets were also placed at three other Dublin offices in Clyde Road, South Circular Road and Peter Street. Pickets were to remain at the four offices until 11am this morning.
Yesterday, ten hours of talks at the Labour Relations Commission failed to resolve the row.
It is understood that while a management proposal to resume talks was acceptable to the union, it was subsequently withdrawn and redrafted.
The new draft which would have required the union to accept decentralisation in principle was said to be a ‘bridge too far’ for staff.
Only a small minority of the 400 staff at FÃS have agreed to decentralise to Birr.
250 staff who are members of SIPTU voted to take action after management said promotions would be linked to being prepared to relocate to Birr.
SIPTU said it was the first of a series of stoppages over decentralisation.
It appears that the deadman is attracting some unwanted attention
Call for decentralisation review as Ahern admits difficulties
From:ireland.com
Saturday, 13th May, 2006Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte has called for a review of the Government’s decentralisation plan after the Taoiseach admitted it was facing serious difficulties.
The plan, which would see 10,600 civil and public servants being moved from Dublin to over 50 locations around the country, has met with opposition from unions. Staff in FAS have been staging industrial action over what they claim is pressure being put on them to move.
Bertie Ahern admitted in an interview published today that the Government’s deadline for decentralisation looked increasingly unlikely to be met. “We might have taken too much on in one go,” he said. “We put ourselves in too tight a timeframe.”
Mr Rabbitte said today Mr Ahern’s comments proved that it was the “beginning of the end” for the plan, which was devised by former Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy in December 2003. “It was not thought out, poorly planned and incapable of being implemented on the scale and in the timeframe proposed.”
He added: “The Taoiseach should now be honest with those locations which have been promised relocated agencies or Departments and which he knows is not going to happen.”
The Labour leader called on Mr Ahern to engage in an all-party review to agree “a properly planned programme of decentralisation based on the national spatial strategy”.
Siptu wants State agencies removed from the decentralisation plan. The union will hold a protest next week outside the offices of Minister of State at the Department of Finance Tom Parlon, who is responsible for implementing the project.
The Impact union, which represents 1,200 civil servants and state agency staff earmarked for relocation, warned last week it was planning a lobbying campaign for the next General Election as dissatisfaction with decentralisation was a major issue for Dublin voters.
Decentralisation is problematic says Ahern
13 May 2006 13:42
The Taoiseach has conceded that the Government may have taken too much on in one go with regard to its decentralisation plan.In an interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Ahern said many civil and public servants wanted to move, but that the sizeable logistics involved were causing difficulties.
He was commenting on the plan to move more than 10,600 civil servants to 50 locations outside Dublin.
There have been continuing calls from civil service unions for the policy to be re-examined.
The Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte has called for a review of the government’s plans. He said the Taoiseach’s comments were an admission that decentralisation cannot work.
Finally some grasp of reality is starting to be shown by those in government;
Parlon’s position is starting to look untenable on this and the reference to him in Chaos in relation to the Standish situation was really quite unbelievable and displays what Osterich type positions he has the capacity to adopt.
really thomond…
parlon is on record as stating that he has 10600 people signed up to move, while seeking 10000. With the country so small there is no reason why the headquarters of many goverment function can’t be placed in different parts of the country. For goodness sake , france germany and america are hugely decentralised. Companies stretch across the globe with no trouble. With people commuting from portlaoise to dublin , why can’t fas be located in the midlands? They have ‘outlet’ sprinkled throughout the country , so it can’t make much difference where they are. what really difference would it make if the headquarters of aerlingus were in shannon? or the tourism boar was in galway. How often do the tourism boards actually meet face to face with others groups ? it only takes two hour to cross the country for goodness sake !!!
kerry food groups has their world headquarters in where ? kerry. decentralisation is a great idea. The only fault is that the expectation was raised that it could be done quickly.
Bertie admitted problems as he is only to happy to heap s**t on all three pd ministers (fairly/or not , depending on your opinion) Parlon has had this decentralisation thing for just long enough that he is now seen as ‘owning’ the issue/problem
This is a political discussion not appropriate to this website. thumbs down to you .thumbs down.
@a boyle wrote:
really thomond…
parlon is on record as stating that he has 10600 people signed up to move, while seeking 10000.
I’d love to see that list published on a department/agency by department basis
@a boyle wrote:
With the country so small there is no reason why the headquarters of many goverment function can’t be placed in different parts of the country. For goodness sake , france germany and america are hugely decentralised.
The difference is that places like France and Germany have decentralised to large centres taking the UK as an example large back office functions are decentralised to places like Sheffield or Liverpool and the key decision making functions are retained in the capital] Companies stretch across the globe with no trouble. With people commuting from portlaoise to dublin , why can’t fas be located in the midlands? They have ‘outlet’ sprinkled throughout the country , so it can’t make much difference where they are. what really difference would it make if the headquarters of aerlingus were in shannon? [/QUOTE]
Fas workers wish to remain in the capital as should be their right unless the government wishes to go the private sector route and pay redundancy re: Aer Lingus Shannon would be an acceptable location given the needs of their business but moving Marine to Virginia is akin to moving Aer Lingus to Belmullet.
@a boyle wrote:
or the tourism boar was in galway. How often do the tourism boards actually meet face to face with others groups ? it only takes two hour to cross the country for goodness sake !!!
Research indicates that even in the age of conference calls and e-commerce the average manager has at least 5 face to face meetings per week off site] kerry food groups has their world headquarters in where ? kerry. decentralisation is a great idea. The only fault is that the expectation was raised that it could be done quickly. [/QUOTE]
Kerry Foods are close to their main production site their business is entirely product driven comparisons with between a food ingredients leader and national governance have little vailidity.
@a boyle wrote:
Bertie admitted problems as he is only to happy to heap s**t on all three pd ministers (fairly/or not , depending on your opinion) Parlon has had this decentralisation thing for just long enough that he is now seen as ‘owning’ the issue/problem
This is a political discussion not appropriate to this website. thumbs down to you .thumbs down.
I agree spatial planning should have little to do with politics but in this instance it has; had a sensible decentralisation programme been put together where multi-department back office functions were decentralised to a small number of large sites in NSS designated gateways I amongst many others would be welcoming this
for many of the government functions the location of its headquarters is almost irrelevant. this is because these agencies have a national network. So say fas was in portlaoise, time lost travelling back to have meeting with the minister for jobs , is offset by time saved travelling to and from the network. This would apply to the departement for health & hse-no reason it could not be located outside the capital, it has to have regular contacts with all hospitals.
This applies directly to the department of education as. this department spends much more time deally with clients (schools) than with the rest of government. so it makes sense to move it west and save on travel between it and all the schools of the country .
Any large organisation has to overcome the human management issues that come with size and so how kerry foods runs itseld is very important in the context of government. 2 decentralisation in ireland is not like moving from london to another city , as ireland is tiny.a fraction of the size of other countries. it would be a county in america.
3. are you biased ? are you a manager of some organisation (and so perhaps have some real insight), or are you possibly a civil servant who doesn’t want to move out of the big smoke ?
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pentagon/
need I go on
The difference between back office and central administrative control cannot be stressed enough and your assertion that I work in the public sector is misplaced I work in a fee based environment so I have nothing other than an altuistic interest in this.
area of ireland 70,286 km squared
area of metropolitan paris 14,518.3 km squaredthe country is tiny , tiny . i know that traffic makes it seem big , but is it really really small. what is proposed is not decentralisation but moving to the suburbs. the only parts of the country that are any distance from dublin are west cork , west kerry , and donegal.
So why move everything around if it has such a small population; surely you can see that the type of professional services required to run a government simply don’t exist in any location in this country other than Belfast or Cork and to a lessor extent Limerick and Galway.
How much would PPHARS have cost if the Deloitte consultants had to drive to Galway each time they had to meet a senior CC?
Put simply taking your figures of above Ireland would have a population of 60m if it had a similar population density of the Paris basin; it doesn’t and throwing jobs around to unsuitable locations will ensure that it never acheives a sustainable density.
Thomond Park wrote:So why move everything around if it has such a small population]😮 Too right, moving the Dept. of Agriculture staff from Cork to Macroom under the mask of decentralisation is nothing more than freeing up land for the FF mafia to make more millions.
All the better to stuff into those brown paper bags my friend??so how kerry foods runs itseld is very important
Yes, Kerry Group have their headquarters in Tralee. They don’t have their staff catering operations to Aunascall, their HR dept. in Fenit, their IT staff in Castlegregory, their accountants in Lixnaw, etc. It would be nuts from a business point of view and decentralisation (as proposed) is simply nuts. It will add 100s of millions to the annual costs of running the civil service. Even ignoring all the milage for meetings, how will it be possible, for example, to offer any sort of IT support for an office of 50 civil servants in a village in Mayo? It will require massive duplication for basic support services which will result in huge inefficiencies.
If the government were serious about decentralisation, they would pick ONE location – say Shannon for example – and move the entire civil service there. But this plan isn’t about creating regional balance or easing the infrastructure pressures in Dublin. It’s a cynical political excercise to help certain TDs retain their seats at massive cost to the public purse.
The idea that technology can overcome all the blindingly obvious flaws with this plan is naive. This stance reminds me of paperless office advocates who stuck to their confident predictions for decades even as all empirical evidence demonstrated trends which completely contradicted their theories. I’ve used video-conferencing on and off for years and it is actually less productive than telephone conferencing. Despite the wishful thinking of some, this reality is being recognised and video-conferencing is actually used less, in my experience, these days than ten years ago. And telephone conferencing is FAR less productive than sharing an office with the relevant people. Anyone who claims otherwise has little experience of business or commerce.
Well put Jim I agree that this government has totally ignored the technical support required
Decentralisation protests could spread – Siptu
From:ireland.com
Monday, 15th May, 2006Promotional prospects at Enterprise Ireland and the Combat Poverty Agency are being linked to workers’ willingness to relocate under the Government’s decentralisation plan, Siptu claimed today.
Branch organiser Owen Reidy said he expected the industrial action taking place at Fás over the issue, to spread to other State and related agencies.
Mr Reidy said similar conditions being attached to Fás workers’ terms of employment have emerged at Enterprise Ireland and the Combat Poverty Agency.
He said a Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed that positions arising from a voluntary early retirement scheme at Enterprise Ireland are contingent on a commitment to relocate to Shannon.
A Department of Finance memo regarding the signing of leases on new two premises for the agency at East Point in Dublin stated the contracts – due to be signed within weeks – must make provision for decentralisation.
Mr Reidy said the agency was seeking early opt-out clauses in the lease in an attempt to “lock staff into decentralising to Shannon”. The new premises are intended to consolidate workers currently based at four locations around Dublin.
The Department of Social and Family Affairs is also insisting that future contracts include a clause making relocation to Monaghan a condition of employment, Mr Reidy added.
He said decentralisation “is now in disarray right across the State agency sector”. He warned that although the union would continue to use labour relations mechanisms, it would also consider industrial action.
He also rejected criticism of trade unions from the Minister of State at the Department of Finance Tom Parlon, who has responsibility for body co-ordinating decentralisation.
Mr Parlon, who has responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW), said rivalries between trade unions over posts promotions are holding up the plans.
Mr Reidy said independent observers were critical of the plan for the same reasons as the unions. “There was no planning, no consultation with the stakeholders, and no foresight. It was a gimmick, a rabbit pulled out of a hat on Budget day.
“Now we [unions] have to deal with it and for whatever reason, the Government don’t seem to able to address the problems we’ve raised,” Mr Reidy told ireland.com .
He suggested the focus should be on civil servants where there is greater interest in decentralisation but insisted the plan was unsuitable for State agencies.
Siptu has organised a protest against decentralisation next week outside the OPW headquarters that is due to be attended by members in semi-State agencies represented by the union.
What exactly is Parlon’s point?
Harney concedes ‘issue’ with decentralisation
25 May 2006 16:58
The Tánaiste, Mary Harney, has acknowledged that ‘there is an issue’ in relation to the decentralisation of staff in semi-state organisations such as FÃS and Enterprise Ireland.Ms Harney said she did not want to interfere in the industrial relations procedure currently underway at FÃS.
However, she has acknowledged that staff in those agencies could not simply transfer to other departments or organisations if they did not want to decentralise.
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Earlier, delegates at the IMPACT trade union conference called on the Government to reconsider its current proposal on decentralisation.
A number of speakers criticised the plan to relocate Government departments and state agencies out of Dublin, describing it as ill-conceived, unfair to workers, and damaging to the delivery of services to the public.
A number of motions were passed urging IMPACT’s executive to seek full redress for all members, disadvantaged as a result of their wish to remain in their current locations.
Delegates also instructed their negotiators to negotiate the removal from the decentralisation process of public bodies, State agencies and other organisations where the majority of staff are opposed to decentralisation.
The trade union, which has spearheaded opposition to the Government’s public service re-location plans, represents professional and technical public servants, the majority of whom have refused to leave Dublin.
IMPACT representatives are due to meet the Minister of State, Tom Parlon, next Tuesday to discuss the plans.
Meanwhile the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has said he does not agree with SIPTU President Jack O’Connor that decentralisation is now a central issue that could derail the current partnership pay talks.
Speaking at a conference on the modernising and management of public services, he said that if there is any pressure associated with decentralisation, it is to relocate the over 10,000 public servants who want to move as soon as possible.
Looks like the end
@Thomond Park wrote:
Looks like the end
“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
🙂
KB2Can I take that to mean that neither the middle nor the end will manifest themselves?
@Thomond Park wrote:
Can I take that to mean that neither the middle nor the end will manifest themselves?
Exactly. An Irish solution to an Irish problem. Bumble along, blathering “Shur it will be allright, it will come right. That’s fine, grand, loike”
No thought was put into decentralisation. Some gombeen politico heard about private sector outsourcing, thought it was “a good thing” and decided to do the same with the civil service.
Ireland’s real issue with the civil service is economy of scale, not location. Ireland has the same population as the greater Birmingham area but, to keep abreast of what is happening in Bruxelles, it must try to maintain a civil service capable of doing so. I believe in decentralisation, but it should be done properly as part of an overall plan, with appropriate controls and benchmarks. Start by tackling the health boards, have one board for the country, cut out the dead wood, job duplication, etc. and put the money saved into the key area – healthcare – not spending on administration. Then implement a phased (say 10years) programme to move “back-office” functions in the various Departments and create an “International Dept” that would handle EU matters for all departments. But will the mandarins give up that power, travel and their business class flights to Bruxelles? …………..
KB2
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