Three thousand Dublin-based civil servants will be left surplus to requirements once the Government's troubled decentralisation programme is completed by 2010, according to new figures, writes Mark Hennessy,Political Correspondent
More than 7,000 State jobs have been, or are to be, moved out of the capital under the programme, which was first unveiled in late 2003 by then minister for finance Charlie McCreevy.
Just 4,275 Dublin-based staff have submitted applications to go to the Department of Finance-run Central Applications Facility, while many hard-to-transfer specialists, such as Ordnance Survey cartographers, are still refusing to move with their jobs.
Five hundred staff have already moved and a further 1,600 officials have transferred between departments in Dublin, where they are slotting into new roles in anticipation of subsequent redeployment to one of 53 locations chosen by the Government.
However, 3,960 officials already working in State offices outside Dublin have applied for transfers to other provincial offices, while just 660 Dublin-based civil servants have applied to fill the vacancies created by these moves.
Seán O'Riordan, general secretary of the Association of Higher and Civil Public Servants, in a newsletter sent to his members, wrote: "This represents the worst nightmare of all from an administrative perspective: not alone will there be substantial surpluses in Dublin but the meeting of targets for new decentralised locations can only be met by creating chaos in the provinces. This is robbing from Peter to half-pay Paul."
About 150 principal officers, each paid between €80,000-€106,000, who are unwilling to leave Dublin, will see their jobs transferred out, without having an already-existing role to fill elsewhere in the capital.
According to officially released figures just one Ordnance Survey Ireland worker in the last 15 months has applied to move to Dungarvan under the Government scheme.
Some 54 new staff have been recruited on the basis that they will transfer out of Dublin.