Madam, - The decentralisation programme announced last December is widely recognised by many as a cynical vote-catching scheme by the Government parties ahead of the European and Local Elections.
As a sitting Dublin City Councillor and a candidate in the upcoming elections, I believe that the prospective loss of over 10,000 jobs from the capital should be very much a live and important election issue. All politics are indeed local, and it doesn't get more local than jobs in your own locality. It should be interesting to hear how the Dublin-based candidates from the Government side defend the stripping of assets from our city to the benefit of other areas.
Whatever about the Civil Service and its employees being able to transfer freely between departments to facilitate where the individuals voluntarily want to live and work, those working in the semi-State sector don't have that luxury.
Up to 2,500 staff from over 20 different state agencies are affected. They are employed by very different employers under very different conditions, unlike the Civil Service, which is a common employer for all staff in all Government Departments. Accordingly, there is no existing transferability between one semi-State employer and another, and none between the semi-States and the Civil Service. This obviously removes any flexibility or choice for those state agency workers - a majority by anecdotal accounts - who wish to remain in Dublin.
Civil servants and semi-State staff are shortly to be asked to complete a Central Application Form (CAF) on which they can indicate their preference for what part of the country they'd like to work in. Anywhere except Dublin, that is. It looks likely that unions representing these staff members, will recommend that they boycott the CAFs.
Alternatively, they could avail of an to spoil their votes by writing Dublin in "capital" letters, across their CAF slips. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr FINTAN CASSIDY,
(Independent),
Annadale Crescent,
Dublin 9.