Madam, - The proposal Mr McCreevy announced on Budget Day was the diffusion, not decentralisation, of the Civil Service. His statement would have been more credible if he had also announced the relocation of the Taoiseach's Department and the Dáil to somewhere central like Athlone. As it is, the Government has simply shredded the National Spatial Strategy for obviously political reasons.
It is shameful that the Government, for what it perceives will be to its electoral advantage, is content to scatter 10,000 people and their families across counties without regard to the effect on them. The voluntary nature of the proposal is also open to question. As the spouse of a civil servant I have no guarantee that I would get a commensurate job in either pay or challenge outside Dublin as the job I currently hold. In this regard I am tied to Dublin and so, therefore, is my husband. But with so many Departments leaving, will there be any vacancies for him to fill if he wishes to stay?
I believe our Presidency of the European Union will present civil servants with an ideal opportunity to show the Government how unhappy they are with these arbitrary, high-handed and badly thought out proposals. - Yours, etc.,
MIRIAM O'KEEFFE, Strandville Avenue, North Strand, Dublin 3.
Madam, - The Government's relocation scheme has many problematic aspects. However, the proposal to move the Equality Authority and Equality Tribunal to Roscrea enters into the realm of the bizarre. Equality bodies are of fundamental importance in modern European states. They have to be accessible to individual complainants and civil society groups, as well as to public authorities and private sector bodies.
Given the reality of existing infrastructure deficiencies, Roscrea is simply not adequately accessible, especially for the under-privileged groups whom the authority and tribunal mainly deal with. Both bodies should be treated as having constitutional importance, and as being crucial to securing access to justice. There appears to be no willingness to contemplate moving the Office of the Attorney General, Law Library or the Supreme Court to Thurles, as amusing as that would be: similarly, neither equality body should be cut off from their stakeholders. - Yours, etc.,
COLM O'CINNEIDE, Faculty of Laws, University College London, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG
Madam, - I was very much relieved to read in today's Irish Times the headline "Relocation plans will not be diluted". The Government has taken a bold and courageous step, and should not be blackmailed or intimidated into reversing its decentralisation policy.
Thousands of public servants, especially those in the higher grades, have had very secure, well-paid jobs all their working lives, while hundreds of thousands of their fellow Irishwomen and men were forced to leave the country in previous decades to seek a livelihood.
On the face of it, it would appear that many of the senior public servants are already up in arms, and threatening all kinds of anarchy. Have these people not taken enough from society, they are being asked to move maybe 200 miles at the most, not to another country or planet, and are still guaranteed their cushy numbers, and benchmarking.
Decentralisation will have a very positive impact on rural Ireland, it will also help to decongest the capital, cool the overheated property market, and have a balancing effect on rural depopulation.
I would humbly suggest to those public servants that are considering thwarting this process, where is your patriotism? To quote John Fitzgerald Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country". - Yours, etc.,
J.V.CARROLL, Otterbrook, Willbrook Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.