Madam, - In his Budget, the Minister for Finance has demonstrated his complete ignorance of public sector management. The transfer of whole Departments and offices of State from Dublin to provincial locations will do nothing to improve policy formation or public service delivery - and little, if anything, to improve value for money.
What material benefits have accrued to the citizens of Ireland from relocating social welfare offices to Donegal or legal aid offices to Cahirciveen in terms of better policy formation, public services or value for money? I can appreciate the jubilation in the towns of Clonakilty, Claremorris, Cavan and all the other locations identified for decentralisation. However, as in everything else with this Government, the big picture has been missed and the substantial needs of these people will not be addressed.
For years now we have had programmes of change in both central and local government with the Strategic Management Initiative and Better Local Government. The central idea behind these programmes was to disengage the central civil service from delivery issues, so that it could act more strategically, and to devolve functions and decision-making to local government so it could respond to the needs of local people and deliver better services. Neither of these things has happened.
What is needed is a devolution of functions, together with a transfer of staff and decision-making power from Government Departments to local authorities. This would do more to ensure the balanced regional development to which the National Spatial Strategy aspires.
Local government reform, and especially devolution, will not happen with Government Departments scattered throughout the country. The Minister of Finance has copperfastened the impossibility of genuine, as opposed to geographical, decentralisation. - Yours, etc.,
JUSTIN F. KEOGAN, Co-editor, Local Government in Ireland: Inside Out, Meadow Mount, Dublin 16.