Trading Places

The vestigial remains of once grand plans to decamp almost 380 civil servants to Cavan is a lopsided sign and the prospect lands once earmarked for decentralisation will be sold at auction next year.

Such a move would almost certainly close the book on another ‘almost happened’ story for the county, which has received its fair share of unfortunate knocks down through the years.

Perched crooked on a grassy nub just off Farnham Road, and barely visible beneath nearly 15 years of congealed dirt, still stands the proclamation: ‘Sale Agreed for Government Decentralisation’.

“The future use of the site at Farnham Road, Cavan, is currently under consideration by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland,” a spokesperson for the Office of Public Works (OPW) informed the Celt when quizzed on the site’s future last week.

With a remit that includes advising the Minister for Public Expenditure, the OPW spokesperson added, if “no alternative State requirement” can be found for the 10.84 acres, bought from the Brady family in 2006 for €2.9m, the land will be sold instead.

They even provided a timeframe: “If no alternative State requirement is identified, the site may be disposed of by public auction in 2021.”

The update will come as a blow to some who sought to reawaken the decentralisation dream in recent times.

Only last year did Fianna Fáil County Councillor John Paul Feeley call for the government to reconsider the idea.

Cllr Feeley laments that the push to pry offices away from Kildare Street to rural Ireland in the noughties was less successful than the programme that preceded it, when the Department of Agriculture partially set up shop in Cavan Town during the Fianna Fáil reign of the 1980s.

“It was probably too ambitious in many respects, an attempt to do too much too quickly,” he reflects on the 2003 decentralisation programme, announced by former Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy mere hours before Budget 2004 was unveiled.

Cllr Feeley suggests where decentralisation has happened, Cavan included, it has been “hugely positive”.

“There’s no reason why the State, which spends its time telling Foreign Direct Investment to ‘come to Ireland, put part of your business in a rural location’, cannot follow its own advice and have parts of public sector placed in provincial towns,” contends Cllr Feeley.

The knock-on effect is less “pressure” on Capital resources, from housing to transport, and an economic spin-off for the outlying beneficiaries.

“You look at Cavan already, Carrick-on-Shannon, look at Sligo, Letterkenny. Lots of these places have had major decentralisation in the past and it has worked well, and very well for the government departments that moved there as well,” he suggests.

The 2003 Decentralisation Programme involved potentially relocating over 10,000 civil and public service jobs to 53 locations in 25 counties nationwide.

Ultimately, only an “advance” party of staff from the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources ever arrived in Cavan.

There had been challenges almost from the offset.

A preliminary survey of staff preferences conducted in January 2004 was overwhelmingly negative towards the idea.

It saw 83.96% (356) of 424 staff asked reply ‘No’ to moving to Cavan. Only 6.84% (29) replied ‘Yes’, less even that the 32 (7.55%) still undecided. Seven (1.65%) returned the form incomplete.

To the option of another location, not Cavan, more than half (51.9%) still replied ‘No’, with less than a third of those surveyed open to another location.

To quell the backlash at the time, Cavan Council got involved, drawing up a glossy prospectus profiling the county. Overseen by County Manager Seamus Neely, the liberally distributed brochure highlighted the high standard of living on offer in Cavan, along with other important information such as access to schools, retail, amenities etc.

At the time those living locally working in the civil service in Dublin also had to endure daily commutes on the old N3 between Cavan and the Capital.

Twelve months on, the Commission for Public Service Appointments had 176 expressions of interest for new posts in Cavan on their desk, including requests for inter-departmental transfers.

But by 2010, with the country battered by the economic crash and the decentralisation dream fading fast, just 57 staff had moved from Dublin to Cavan, or 15% of the 378 initially envisaged.

Failure to deliver on the plan wasn’t down to lack of effort. After the €2.9m deal for the Farnham Road greenfield site was signed in May, 2006, the OPW spent little time chasing down what office accommodation they could find for the fresh-faced arrivals.

Less than a month later, they secured a four-and-a-half-year lease, costing €46,970 per annum, for the second floor of the then newly-built Elm House.

The first wave saw 38 staff members test the waters, with 11 more accepting formal transfer offers for Cavan.

A second smaller office space was also rented in expectation of further influx. The lease was signed on August 1, 2006, expiring July 31, 2010, at a yearly cost of €25,928.

The fit-outs for both spaces cost in excess of €200,000.

Both leases were subsequently renewed and, according to the most up-to-date figures, there are currently over 40 staff working for the Department of Communications in Cavan. There are still a much greater number (250+) split between three sites in Dublin - Adelaide Road, Customs House and Beggars Bush - and 30 more in Wexford.

Only about a third of the overall target numbers, over 3,400 posts, were eventually decentralised from Dublin offices despite the lofty aims of the 2003 programme.

Concerning the Farnham Road site, the OPW’s Annual Report 2006 states “expressions of interest” from contractors were sought, and the ambition was to have new offices built by 2009 at the latest.

Detailed specification and design of the new headquarters were due to be drawn up in the interim.

Before buying the Farnham Road field, the OPW examined a number of site options.

According to one person with intimate knowledge of the move, the purchase represented decent “value for money” in those heady, sale-slick Celtic Tiger years.

The “size of the site”, as well as its “proximity” to the main town centre, all swung in Farnham Road’s favour, says the former senior civil servant, who wished to remain anonymous.

“It ticked all the boxes, it made the most sense,” they added, noting that once people knew Cavan was picked for decentralisation, it placed previously unseen “premium” on all large swathes of property near the town centre.

“Recommendations were sought. [Farnham Road] made the most sense. It sounds like a lot of money now, but not in those days. When you compare the price to what sold after, it really comes across as okay value for money. What they’d get now for it, I couldn’t tell you. Not close would be my guess.”

Within the last County Development Plan 2014-20, now currently under review, the lands at Farnham Road are zoned for ‘Enterprise and Employment’.

In today’s climate, a soft canvas of well-placed local knowledge dredged a broad value of estimates, ranging anywhere €30,000 to €50,000 per acre if the lands were put to market. The department paid approximately €267,527 per acre a decade-and-a-half ago. The upper end of today’s estimate would strongly depend on rezoning the lands for residential purposes.

In late 2011 Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, formally shelved plans for decentralisation. By then, €18.8m had been spent acquiring lands for projects deferred, Cavan among them.

The OPW currently has around 30 vacant sites on its books nationwide, some of which have remained idle for as long, and longer, than the Farnham Road plot.

Fianna Fáil’s Brendan Smith remembers the conversations, many held in hushed tones, in the corners and corridors of Leinster House, when the idea of decentralisation was first mooted.

He was working in the offices of John Wilson when the 1980s decentralisation scheme was unveiled, and in Government as Minister of State (2004-7) there was real emphasis to see moves materialise.

He was on the Government’s front-bench as Minister for State for Children, then Agriculture, and for a short-time, Justice, when it became brutally clear their vision was undeliverable in the cold stare of recession.

“The idea was that it would always be done incrementally,” states Deputy Smith, who in mid-July 2008 still strongly believed decentralisation for Cavan was going to happen. “It’s fair to say, there were those against at senior level in the public service, and that held everything up.”

Deputy Smith does though see scope for breathing new life into the old decentralisation plans.

The Covid pandemic, improved infrastructure locally, and a greater push to embrace remote working all lend credence to the argument.

Having lobbied hard to have Cavan Town recognised as an economic ‘growth centre’ in the National Develop Plan of the time, Deputy Smith says, previous decentralisation schemes were delivered successfully when there was a lot less technological connectivity available.

“I was involved with John Wilson when we got Agriculture decentralised. That was around 1990. There was well over 200 people there, and what a boost it was for the town, and the county.”

This in turn saw “very substantial” investment in primary, secondary and further education in Cavan, as well as in local voluntary and sporting organisations. “Every parish benefited in that respect,” remembers Deputy Smith.

“What [decentralisation] did, I believe, and again more recently when it was tried, it showed there are departments that don’t have to be tied next to offices in Dublin and still function incredibly well. We are seeing it more as well with remote working, the changes having to be made due to Covid, all of that. So I believe there is still potential for decentralisation to be looked at again.”

Fine Gael Senator Joe O’Reilly was a county councillor, elected in 2004, who went on to secure a seat in the Seanad after the 2007 General Election.

He recalls local officials attending panicked ad hoc meetings, and sleepless nights after discussing the economic future of the county when US-firm Teradyne scrapped plans to create almost 800 jobs at a 94-acre site outside Cavan Town.

The area had, he claims, sufficient lands zoned and serviced to accommodate development for an increase of 6,000 new residents.

“There was a lot of worry,” he recalls. “There was a fear Cavan might be left behind economically. When decentralisation was announced, in a lot of ways, after Teradyne pulled out, it gave people hope.”

News the OPW is examining uses for the Farnham Road land is nothing new. News that the department may dispose of the property by public auction next year if “no alternative” can be found, took Sen O’Reilly by surprise.

“I wouldn’t be in favour of that,” he states bluntly.

“I don’t think we should sell valuable assets to the private sector just to be shot of them,” says Sen O’Reilly, who imagines it “incredibly difficult” to claw back anywhere near the €2.9m paid in 2006.

“Personally, I’d never give up on decentralisation. If history has taught us anything, perhaps it’s to be more mindful maybe, less gung-ho in the approach. The idea still has merit, and I think there could be renewed appetite,” regards Sen O’Reilly.

“In the context of where we are right now as a country, what we’re looking for in the future, absolutely decentralisation should be high on the agenda and part of the discussion.”