It has cost nearly a-quarter-of-a-million euro to decentralise each person who has moved under the controversial government plan.
The Taoiseach this week clearly set out how much money we have to spend on capital investment between now and 2016 but in doing so he revealed the dismal take-up of decentralisation as announced by his predecessor in the Department of Finance, Charlie McCreevy, in 2003.
It was envisaged that 11,000 thousand civil servants would move from the capital to regional headquarters but as of April a mere 3,148 had.
Decentralisation is estimated to have cost €750 million (€750,000,000) to date. This means it cost €238,000 per person decentralised.
Furthermore the analysis by Newstalk shows that of the 94 major decentralisation projects planned in 2003 only 19 have managed to move 100% of their staff out of Dublin – That’s a dismal 20% of the overall target.
44 of the 94 projects – or 47% – have moved none, 0%, of their staff – despite in many cases expensive headquarters and sites being built or bought.
The remaining 33% or 31 of the 94 projects have split their offices (some with very low take-up) into two bases, one in Dublin and one in a decentralised town.
This all means that an ill thought out and terribly executed plan to streamline the civil service has resulted in staff scattered around the country in 125 offices instead of 94 at a cost of a-quarter-of-a-billion euro and counting.
