KEY ELEMENTS of the Government’s decentralisation programme have come to a halt and, with a review planned for next year, senior political sources are doubtful the policy will be maintained in any meaningful sense.
More than 3,100 posts have relocated to date to almost 40 locations. Full completion of the projects under way and approved will result in about 4,400 moves overall, according to the Department of Finance.
At the launch of the revised capital spending programme this week, Taoiseach Brian Cowen accepted this was the number of civil servants who would be decentralised, and not the 10,000 envisaged when the scheme was unveiled in 2003.
Decentralisation projects which have been deferred, pending the overall review of the programme next year, include: Carlow – the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment; the Curragh, Defence Forces; Claremorris, Office of Public Works; Charlestown, Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs; Drogheda, Department of Social Protection; and Mullingar, Department of Education & Skills.
A spokesman for the Department of Finance said the property costs of the programme so far had been offset by savings or reallocation of property by the Office of Public Works (OPW) to other schemes in 2008, valued in the region of €550 million.
“More than €350 million of this relates to the disposal of high-value sites at the height of the property market,” the spokesman said. “The potential for future receipts is much more limited.”
In addition, property valued at €75 million was transferred to the Affordable Homes Partnership. The OPW had also agreed joint venture development schemes with a value of about €125 million, although the spokesman said this was “subject of course to volatility in the current property market”.
The total expenditure on the property aspects of the programme to December 2009 was €338 million, comprised of the costs of site/property acquisitions, fit-out works and rent of about €330 million expended by the OPW, together with some €7 million incurred directly in respect of property costs by other organisations.
The spokesman said: “The total expenditure on non-property costs to the end of September 2009 for all decentralising organisations is approximately €15 million.
In addition the OPW has recently advised the Department of Finance that its spend to date on staffing costs on the property aspects of the programme is €12.6 million.”
