As far as I am aware, all parties in the House are in favour of a rational planned programme of decentralisation. Deputies on all sides of the House privately concede that the plan announced in 2003 by the then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, is a shambles, is unworkable, is doing permanent damage to the cohesion of governance and is causing serious unjustifiable disruption to families who have long put down roots in this city.

Why has a voluntary programme of decentralisation, announced admittedly off the top of the head and for political reasons, turned into a compulsory programme of relocation of civil servants and public servants working for agencies? In some agencies, nobody is offering to relocate. In FÁS six people out of 400 are offering to relocate. Specialist agencies will lose the undoubted skills accumulated over the years. Permanent damage will be done to the corporate memory in the Civil Service. We know that a parallel Civil Service will be developed at enormous cost — we do not know how much. In the words of my colleague, Deputy Burton, for the more than 5,000 who are determined not to move, they will end up being whitewalled in this city with somebody scrounging around to try to find work for them to do. That is utterly unjustifiable. However, what is most unjustifiable——

The Deputy's time is concluded.

——is that civil and public servants in this city who had married and are rearing families, who have families in education, are forcibly being relocated. That is the issue. It is made plain that if they want promotion, they must be agreeable to transfer.

Has the time not come for us to agree an all-party review that would seek to underpin the national spatial strategy announced by the Taoiseach in light of the census figures, which will be available soon? Would that not be a sensible approach to a programme that his Deputies behind him admit has failed? We have had sensible planned negotiated decentralisation before and we can have it again.

I ask the Deputy to give way to the Taoiseach. By an order of the House I must call Deputy Deasy at 11 a.m. and the Technical Group is entitled to put a question.

If we want to transfer people to Athy, Ballina, Clonmel or wherever, we can do it by agreement and by negotiation. That is not what is happening and it is a disgraceful slight on the service given to this State by so many worthy public servants.

I reiterate to Deputy Rabbitte and to the House that decentralisation is a voluntary process and programme.

It is not.

From the outset guarantees have been given by the Government that all employees not wishing to transfer out of Dublin will be facilitated with an alternative post in Dublin, if the situation arises.

It will be without promotion.

They will be doing nothing.

I readily agree with what Deputy Rabbitte has asked. We will negotiate and deal with the Civil Service unions and work with them as we did on the programme that I launched over ten years ago when there was successful decentralisation to Letterkenny, Sligo——

——Ballina, Ennis, Tullamore and several other centres. It takes an increasing amount of time to effect decentralisation. The OPW and the committee dealing with decentralisation have sourced a number of sites and buildings and are dealing with the operational arrangements. Several thousands of civil servants want to move while others do not want to move. I understand for people who have children at certain stages of education such as second level or college, it may not be suitable for them. I accept it creates difficulties with promotional posts, as arose in FÁS which has been asked to move to Birr. The Government has been actively trying to address these issues.

I also readily admit there has been no appetite within the State agencies to move out of Dublin. The figures on the take-up in that regard have been very small. The reason for decentralisation now is the same as it was a decade ago, to achieve better balanced regional development. I am not arguing with what Deputy Rabbitte said but this city cannot continue to take the densities being forced on it and the traffic pressures without the Government responding by trying to move some people to other centres.

If the Taoiseach was serious about trying to ensure balanced regional development——

The Deputy should wait for his colleague to ask a question.

Daily, people commute great distances to this city. It would be far better if we were to relocate people to offices in the regions where they could successfully provide services to the public. The Government is working with the public service unions and is determined to try as best it can to facilitate, on a voluntary basis, those who want to move and equally those who want to stay.

I cannot understand how the Taoiseach can say this city cannot take the pressure and that we must alleviate it while the Government ignores its own national spatial strategy. The Taoiseach said the task is to take pressure off this city but when one checks the applicants applying for transfers to various Departments, a high percentage of them are civil and public servants living in parts of the country other than Dublin who wish to transfer to other parts of the country. How will such transfers alleviate the pressure in Dublin? What is the point in saying to people that such a transfer is voluntary when they are presented with Hobson's choice to either relocate or not be considered for promotion or to relocate because if they stay here they will have nothing to do? We will end up with a Civil Service similar to the Legal Aid Board, which has two head offices, one in Cahirciveen and one in Mount Street, with all the costs involved in personnel flying by Aer Arann to this city two or three times a week. That is the model we will have throughout the country. We will have a parallel Civil Service.

There is no difficulty about a planned programme of negotiated relocation and the one to which the Taoiseach referred took successive Governments ten years to agree. What is involved here is the enforced compulsory relocation of public and civil servants. That is not acceptable. The Taoiseach knows he has misled——

I ask the Deputy to give way to the Taoiseach to facilitate the Technical Group.

——many of the towns to which he has promised to relocate agencies. In the case of Mitchelstown, 200 people from Bus Éireann were promised to be relocated there, but there has not been a single application to transfer there. Does that promise fool the people of Mitchelstown? Some Ministers talk about this process as if we were engaged in a programme of property development. This is not about property, it is about people.

I ask the Deputy to give way to the Taoiseach.

The opportunity exists on an all-party basis for us to sit down together and negotiate a review of this programme, to have regard to the gateways established by the national spatial strategy and to implement a programme of genuine balanced regional development.

The Government will continue to work with the Civil Service unions to relocate a substantial number of public servants. Deputy Rabbitte is aware that all these arguments were used previously. I remember dealing with sections of various Departments that did not want to move ten years ago. However, many of the Departments that did not relocate ten years ago are sorry they did not. They did not envisage the difficulties of population and traffic growth in the city. A sizeable number of public servants want to move. It makes sense to move services, on a balanced basis, to regional locations from where they can be effectively delivered to the public on a nationwide basis, as has been proven.

I accept there are difficulties involved in doing that. If a person is working in Department A which is due to relocate and he or she wishes to remain in that Department and for that Department to remain in Dublin, we must be realistic and acknowledge that we cannot move 99 public or civil servants and leave one to remain in Dublin, and that that person can expect to stay and be promoted. That is an unrealistic argument.

The position is that 99 civil servants want to stay and only one civil servant wants to move.

The position is the opposite to that outlined by the Taoiseach.

A civil servant cannot do that. If a civil servant does not want to leave this city, he or she must transfer to another Department and follow a career path there. A civil servant cannot hold up the relocation of a Department.

Where did that arise?

It is arising day by day.

In fairness to the Technical Group which is entitled to ask a question, I ask Deputy Stagg to allow the Taoiseach to conclude.

We are entitled to an answer as well.

The Government will continue to manage this programme as we have done successfully. When I was Minister for Finance more than ten years ago, I listened to arguments about how it would be impossible for the Office of the Revenue Commissioners to be relocated outside Dublin and for services to be provided from Sligo. It was said at the time that people would not be able to get through by telephone or find the office but now people deal with such issues.

The Taoiseach will know about that soon enough.

Members of the public are happy to deal with services provided from regional locations.

As a Deputy representing the heart of Dublin, I do not understand what people have against other parts of the country. They are nice places to work and live and good places in which to be based.

The Taoiseach might move to one of them.

He might consider relocating the Dáil to one of them.

The Taoiseach is being patronising.

I call Deputy Higgins, and if he is brief he will be able to ask a supplementary question but, as he is aware, it is an order of the House that I am required to call Deputy Deasy at 11 a.m.