A plan to decentralise 200 staff from Bus Éireann's headquarters in Dublin has run into difficulty - because the company has only 80 employees at its head office.
The decision to move 200 posts to the company's proposed new headquarters in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, was announced last December as part of the Government's decentralisation programme.
Nobody has yet told the company, however, where it is to get the additional 120 staff for the move.
Management at the company has said it is unable to draw up a plan for the move as proposed by the Government.
It outlined its difficulties in a letter to the union representing staff at its existing headquarters in Broadstone in Dublin city.
The letter to the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) says about 80 staff are affected by the proposed move to Mitchelstown.
However, the decentralisation implementation group "is still working on the basis that it is 200 people involved in our headquarters as this is the stated Government policy", it adds.
"As a consequence, we cannot formulate any plan for this latter figure and the managing director is in discussions with the Department of Transport on the matter."
The letter was written to the union on April 30th by the company's human resources manager, Mr Des Tallon. It is understood there has been no progress on the matter since.
A Department of Transport spokesman said its position had been outlined in a written Dáil reply by the Minister, Mr Brennan, on May 4th.
In reply to a question by Fine Gael TD Mr David Stanton, the Minister said more than 80 Bus Éireann posts that could be transferred to Mitchelstown had been identified."Discussions with Bus Éireann are continuing and the chairman has been asked to urgently examine the options for meeting the overall target of 200 for Mitchelstown," he said.
"Bus Éireann, along with the other organisations involved in the decentralisation programme, have been asked to prepare an implementation plan by the end of May."
An additional obstacle facing the company in preparing for decentralisation is the almost unanimous opposition to the proposed move from existing staff.
A survey carried out among the 80 Broadstone-based employees by the TSSA indicated that 96 per cent were unwilling to move to Mitchelstown, and 92 per cent did not want to relocate "to any location", the union says.
The survey also asked staff for their views on the motivation behind the decentralisation programme.
Some 85 per cent of respondents said the programme was a "political stunt"; 11 per cent said it was about "regional development".
Mr Roger Hannon, the union's Irish secretary, said it would not rule out balloting for industrial action if members were forced into alternative jobs to facilitate decentralisation.
He said there had been no talks about the fate of members who choose not to decentralise. Offering decentralisation as "voluntary" with no alternative plan for people who wished to stay in Dublin was "little more than duress", he said.
