Trade unions, local interests and third-level institutions will give their views on decentralisation before an Oireachtas committee today and tomorrow amid a growing belief that the deadline for the controversial plan will be extended considerably.
The chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Mr Seán Fleming TD, said yesterday the two key issues would be the implementation and timescale of the programme. Representatives from the Dublin Institute of Technology, the University of Limerick and University College Dublin will give evidence today.
Representatives of regions hoping to benefit from the scheme including Laois Chamber of Commerce and Westmeath County Council will also speak today along with the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social and Family Affairs.
Tomorrow officials from the ICTU and eight constituent unions representing civil and public servants will give evidence and are likely to address the resistance of many of their members to moving out of Dublin.
The Taoiseach and Tánaiste yesterday expressed determination to complete the plan while acknowledging the three-year target might not be met.
Asked about the views expressed by some Ministers that the Government's own deadline might not be met, Mr Ahern said yesterday: "It's a bit like Christmas. It always comes. We'll do it as quick as we can."
He said he thought his colleagues were being realistic about decentralisation. "We know from the experience of 10 years ago that it takes time to get sites, to build buildings, to get offices. That's going to take time, but if you don't set yourself targets and press on, things will never happen. We have made our principled decisions on this. We are going to move on."
He said he had just read a report showing houses in Dublin cost over €100,000 more than they are outside Dublin. "These are huge inflictions on young people . . . I know there are people who get upset about it because they have to move, but the right thing to do . . . what we are doing in decentralisation is right."
The Tánaiste said nearly 3,000 civil servants had indicated a willingness to move to the decentralised locations, but implied that the entire programme might not be completed within the tight timeframe.
"I believe that we will reach the targets," Ms Harney said. "The bulk of the targets will be reached within a short time frame and I believe if we don't reach it quickly the uncertainty that's hanging over the public service will be damaging to the public service and damaging for the Government.
"I think if change or transition is required it should happen more quickly rather than be delayed over a longer period because I think that has implications for the management of the public services, for the performance of public servants and for the functioning of Government."
Mr Fleming said yesterday that the hearing starting today would continue in September when the Minister for Finance, the chairman of the Decentralisation Implementation Group, Mr Phil Flynn, and representatives from the Central Applications Facility would appear before the committee.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said yesterday that the question was not whether the decentralisation programme should be slowed down, but whether it was ever properly thought through.
He said the Oireachtas Committee needed to know whether the Taoiseach and the Ministers behind the plan had decided the decentralisation programme met all necessary criteria before it was given the go-ahead. These criteria had been laid out by the Cabinet sub-committee on the issue, he said. They said decentralisation should focus primarily on the gateway and hub towns pin-pointed in the National Spatial Strategy.
Jobs should be decentralised in clusters; locations chosen should make business sense for the organisation involved. They should have adequate infrastructure and services; they should have high quality transport links to Dublin and there should be extensive preliminary planning and a long lead-in time. He said these criteria had clearly not been met.
He added that the accounting officers for different departments were nervous about expressing doubts as this would provoke a clash with the Government's plans. But "these accounting officers have a solemn duty to inform Ministers of any serious risks".
The national secretary of IMPACT, one of the unions involved, yesterday welcomed the statement by Minister of State Mr Willie O'Dea, advocating the building of consensus on decentralisation. Mr Peter Nolan said it would not be enough to simply implement existing proposals over a longer time. Following a meeting of the union's decentralisation sub-committee yesterday Mr Nolan said a new timetable was necessary, but not sufficient, to develop workable decentralisation.