Skip to content
Latest Developments on Decentralisation

Government should review decision to include semi-state agencies in decentralisation strategy

Date Released: 23 May 2006

SIPTU Regional Secretary for Dublin, Patricia King, has called on the Government to review its decision to include semi-state agencies in its decentralisation programme as a matter or urgency. She pointed out at a press conference today that only 56 out of 2,500 staff affected were willing to relocate from 16 non-commercial semi-states to new centres that range from Gweedore in County Donegal to Clonakilty in County Cork.

She also warned that attempts to coerce employees into relocation would trigger widespread industrial unrest and possibly legal action by people whose basic employment rights were being violated.  

The union’s National Industrial Secretary, Michael Halpenny, said that the decision to decentralise was taken without prior notice or consultation with the workers concerned or their unions. Nor had any rationale ever been provided to explain the decisions to move specific agencies to particular locations.

FÁS Branch Organiser Greg Ennis, whose members at the agency’s head office held a one day strike today, said that the proposal to relocate in Birr would seriously compromise its corporate skills, knowledge base and ability to provide services to the public. Not only that, but the agency had to shed 150 jobs by the end of the year so that recruitment of extra staff to duplicate functions of people who remained in Dublin was not an option.

A representative picket of SIPTU members from the agencies affected will take place at lunchtime tomorrow outside the offices of Tom Parlon, the Minister responsible for implementing the decentralisation programme, at the Office of Public Work in St Stephen’s Green.

 

Ms King said that the Department of Finance was pressurising other semi-state agencies to adopt similar tactics to FÁS in order to force through decentralisation. SIPTU is not opposed to decentralisation and the relocation of staff on a voluntary basis. “Unfortunately the Government, and the Department of Finance in particular, have not been prepared to adopt a voluntary approach.

 

“Given the inherent dangers of their present strategy and the possibility of widespread industrial disruption that could result and, given that the employment conditions and personal circumstances of our members are very different from those of civil servants, I would urge the government to review its decision to include the non-commercial semi-state agencies from its decentralisation programme as a matter of urgency.”





Previous and Next: | Arts Council