Will the Taoiseach take this opportunity to clarify for thousands of people in the employ of the public sector where they stand in the decentralisation project? Thousands of people do not know if they are coming or going or when they will go if it is proposed to persist with this plan.

The agencies, numbering at least 2,500 people, have been removed from it, and of the 1,700 specialist staff in the Civil Service, 20% say they are willing to go under certain circumstances. If we add those two figures together, they amount to more than 4,000 of the original 10,300. Why is the Government determined to persist with a programme that from day one was badly thought out, ill-judged and purely for political window dressing at the time? This is not decentralisation, it is dispersal of civil servants and it is damaging to the efficiency of Government and undermines the national spatial strategy.

The extra costs involved will only be calculated in the years ahead. It will be necessary to employ a parallel Civil Service. If 20% of specialist staff say they are prepared to go in certain circumstances, the same will happen as has happened in the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, which is recruiting new specialist personnel. The implications of losing those specialist skills are unthinkable for governance.

Has the time not come to state clearly Government policy in this area? People have put down roots in Dublin, their families are in education and their spouses are working. This is not working and the Taoiseach knows it. If the agencies have been removed from the plan and the specialist staff will not go, is it not time to go back to the drawing board for a complete review of the idea?

The Government continues, through the decentralisation implementation group, to work through the proposals with staff. More than 10,600 civil and public servants have applied to the central application facility to relocate and it receives new applications every week.

To answer Deputy Rabbitte's question on the current situation, several Departments have been prioritised and are working their way through the system. Regarding property, building acquisition negotiations have been completed in 13 priority locations for individual agencies or sections. Contracts have been received for another ten locations for further down the line. Suitable sites have been identified in a further 15 locations through negotiation. All have identifiable sections or Departments moving to them. Agreement has been reached with the staff side on several human resource and industrial relations issues, thus enabling progress on transfers and staff promotions. Discussions in other areas are ongoing.

As I said a few weeks ago, it obviously cannot be done this side of Christmas, as would have happened under the original programme. In the priority areas, approximately 2,500 civil servants have been identified. Most agencies and sections have agreed and, in those areas, there is no difficulty. In certain professional areas, people have stated their position and discussions are ongoing. IMPACT has put forward a negotiated paper from the staff side. The movement of staff within and between Departments is under way, and approximately 1,500 staff have already been assigned to posts to be decentralised. All Departments have produced implementation plans setting out the detailed arrangements being put in place to plan for relocation.

The plan is moving ahead at a slower pace, and we require innovative solutions to deal with certain issues. In the State agencies, the programme has not been abandoned. Some are anxious to move but desire flexibility regarding what has been set down hitherto. That must happen, and the industrial relations section of FÁS has produced its own resolutions. Other State agencies will have to do likewise. There is a hard core of civil servants now preparing to move, and those plans are going ahead.

The Taoiseach is confusing what is happening, presumably deliberately. We are talking about transferring entire Departments, and there is no point in confusing that with the fact that there have been applications from civil servants already outside Dublin to return to their town or village of origin. That is a different matter, and it ought to be facilitated in the Civil Service.

The Taoiseach is proposing to transfer Departments out of the capital lock, stock and barrel, contrary to the entire literature on the issue. Most people who have read and studied the issue have made clear that removing the brain of the Civil Service from ready access to Ministers will damage the coherence of Government. Anyone who knows anything about the matter will agree that one needs access to the key people.

The Deputy's time is concluded.

Confusing that with people transferring between Donegal and Kerry or Offaly and Galway is neither here nor there.

Since the only time that the Government will contemplate establishing an all-party committee is when it is deeply in trouble and wishes to share blame and responsibility, is this not an issue on which there should be an all-party review dealing with implementation from the very beginning? It is desirable to relocate people out of Dublin where feasible to address regional imbalance. It is also desirable to transfer young civil servants who wish to return to their county of origin, but that cannot be done the McCreevy way.

The Deputy's time is concluded.

The Taoiseach has now admitted that. The former Deputy, Mr. McCreevy, said that it would be a catastrophe for the Government if it had not implemented the programme by Christmas. The Taoiseach will have none of it implemented by that stage and is chalking up great additional costs for the taxpayer. He is purchasing property for which there may be no occupier and he is not clearing the buildings for sale in Dublin that he imagined.

The whole thing is a mess and an all-party review, given the central importance of the issues, would be a way forward. It could then be done on a workable basis that had been negotiated and planned, in keeping with some kind of spatial strategy and with regard to the real problems that the Taoiseach is now creating for civil and public servants.

I ask the Deputy to give way to the Taoiseach.

I have stated in the House in recent weeks that we cannot implement the programme within the timescale first envisaged but that there are priority areas where advance negotiations with the staff side have been undertaken to move specific sections or units of Departments. That is the clear position, and those plans are moving ahead. They cover approximately 2,500 civil servants from those listed, and that is substantial.

The agencies are different, and I will not complicate matters because they must be handled differently. FÁS reached a resolution last week. We opened the Marine Institute in Galway, which has brought all its professional staff, bar a handful — I believe 20 out of 180. Those highly qualified professionals are successfully being moved from several Dublin locations to Galway, and that can also happen in other agencies. Others will be slower, and I accept Deputy Rabbitte's point that removing a hard core of departmental policy units would create difficulties, especially during parliamentary sessions.

The Taoiseach is doing just that in eight Departments.

Please allow the Taoiseach to speak.

However, the Deputy is talking about a small hard core, and all Members who have been in Government, including the Deputy, know that policy units are small. That issue is being discussed in the implementation group and it has been put forward by senior civil servants, especially from the higher grades. Their case must be listened to because the process is voluntary and the Government has stated throughout that we will consider such arguments. IMPACT and other Civil Service unions, including the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, have advanced their views.

On the other side, there are far more people from a large number of sections, including large portions of, if not all, Departments, who want to move. The restructuring of levels the Deputy mentioned is proceeding without any great disruption to Departments or units in the Civil Service. We are not trying to move 10,000 people over the next two years. We are dealing instead with perhaps 2,500 — a much more manageable number. That is what the implementation group is doing, and I believe it will succeed.