Bye bye Birr FAS jobs?

The relocation of nearly 500 civil servants to Birr and Edenderry under decentralisation has been postponed by the government. The Department of Finance has ruled that permanent accommodation for a total of 378 FÁS workers in Birr is 'not currently affordable'. Despite 22 head office staff having already moved to the town as part of the programme, plans for the remaining FÁS employees to move to Birr are now on the long finger. They will now remain in the Dublin office until the plans are reviewed again in 2011. 'Naturally it"s disappointing. I always had doubts about it but I did feel that with the advance party it would happen. It"s been put on hold so we live in hope,' said county councillor John Carroll. 'Birr has no public services but for the hospital, the relocation of FÁS would have been an injection to the local economy. It wasn"t thought out properly by the government,' the councillor added. The postponement of decentralisation may come as a shock to some, as only on September 30 last, the Tánaiste discussed the plans for the Birr move. 'FÁS"s target date for completing the move to Birr is 2009,' said Minister Mary Coughlan in the Dáil. She detailed how FÁS had purchased a site of 5.59 acres in Birr to construct a permanent decentralised location. 'A planning application to allow development of the site is currently being progressed,' she said. The staff who are in Birr work from a building in the Birr Technology Centre, which FÁS has leased. A total of 96 posts were due to be move to Edenderry by 2010 and a site in the town was purchased by the Education Department to accommodate the organisations at a cost of €1.5 million. Forty-four posts with the Further Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC), 34 posts with the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) and 18 posts with the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI) will all now remain in Dublin for the time being. In light of the recession and government cutbacks, the decision to scale back on decentralisation was taken by the government and announced in Tuesday"s budget, after a review by the Decentralisation Implementation Group. A decision on the organisations" future location will be taken as part of an overall review of decentralisation in three years time. This review will take account of the impact of the rationalisation of State Agencies according to the Finance Department. The planned relocation of 130 Department of Finance jobs to Tullamore is almost complete, with 125 positions currently in place. An enquiry by the Offaly Independent as to what the Department of Finance would do with the other purchased sites in Offaly was not answered at the time of going to print.