IrelandNet.ie

FAS Dream Comes To An End In Birr

Thursday, 23 February 2012

It had long been known it was going to happen but it became official last week when the Government announced that the FAS office will be closed in Birr during the coming months.
It's now expected that the 14 FAS workers who are based in Birr will leave the town by the end of April. The lease on the FAS office in Birr Technology Centre will come to an end in mid-March.
Many in Birr knew for months that this would be the way things would turn out and it was officially announced by the Cabinet last Wednesday.
Cllr Noel Russell, Chairman of Birr Town Council, said the news was disappointing but not unexpected. He commented that the news was 'the final nail.' The decentralisation project in Birr began in 2004 shortly after Minister McCreevy's announcement when FAS said it was going to buy land in Birr. Eventually it paid €1.7 million for a 5.59 acre site on the edge of town beside the Tullamore Road.
The site remains a green field and a couple of years ago a FAS rep said there were no plans for the site. It is the same land which Respond wanted to build housing on, but the Respond project was controversial and planning permission for their social and affordable houses was denied. The cost of the land also more than doubled in the space of just a few months.
In 2007 a small group of FAS workers moved to Birr and have worked since in the Technology Centre on Brendan Street. McCreevy's initial plan had been to move the FAS Headquarters along with 400 FAS workers to Birr but opposition to the move was strong and most of the FAS employees didn't want to move down the country.
An article written in The Irish Independent in May 2006 commented that Birr was a charming town and its residents had good reason to be puzzled about the way the town was being portrayed in the national media at the time. One FAS worker during a protest held a sign aloft which said 'To Hell or to Birr'. In the Rough Guide to Ireland Birr is described as a 'truly delightful Georgian town' but over the airwaves the town was being portrayed as a rural backwater where nobody wanted to go. The simple fact was that while the quality of life might be better in Birr, Dublin was home for the FAS employees, they had been living there for a long time and their children were settled happily in local schools. Moving home can be a difficult experience for some people. There was also the point that Dubliners might moan about the busy-ness of the city (the traffic jams, the high crime rates and the litter) but they are emotionally attached to the capital city.
Speaking last week after the Cabinet's decision Deputy Marcella Corcoran Kennedy said the 14 FAS employees in Birr Technology Centre will be redeployed in the Civil Service and will continue to be employed. She said that McCreevy had planned to decentralise 10,000 employees but only 3,200 had moved.
Deputy Corcoran Kennedy remarked that decentralisation had been an enormous waste of taxpayers' money (a total of €338 million was spent on the acquisition and development of sites under the programme. Some €44 million was spent purchasing 12 sites where decentralisation is not being progressed).
Denis Ronan, Assistant General Secretary of Impact Trade Union, last week pointed out that decentralisation had also not been very successful in other countries in Europe. In Ireland, he commented, decentralisation was advantageous for some but overall he felt the disadvantages of the scheme outweighed its advantages.
Cllr John Carroll pointed out that the IDA hasn't brought a company to Birr since the mid 1980s and the area badly needs a new, major employer. Cllr Russell remarked that when decentralisation started many in Birr welcomed it as it would fill the vacuum which the IDA hadn't filled.

Subscribe to read full newspaper »

Send this page to a friend »