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Decentralisation

Cabinet 'to review decentralisation plan' next summer

Éamon Ó Cuív says the process has been a success – but that the process will be examined next year. Could it be called off?

ÉAMON Ó CUÍV has said that the government intends to review its decentralisation plan next year – amid suggestions that the process could be put on hold.

Ó Cuív said yesterday that the plan, first announced in 2003, would be reviewed once 4,000 of the 11,000-or-so affected government employees had been relocated.

The social protection minister said the process had been a long one but that he was “very happy with how the process has gone.

“Of course, the plan has had its critics and I think that criticism has been harsh at times.”

Ó Cuív insisted that the process had been a success, and maintained that his department had not lost any of its ‘corporate memory’ over its relocation.

Currently about 3,160 staff have been deployed to offices outside Dublin, according to the Irish Times. The process was initially intended to be completed by the end of 2007.

Ó Cuív was speaking at the opening of his department’s new offices in Buncrana, Co Donegal.