CAROLINE CURRAOIN and her 92 colleagues working in BIM, the Irish Sea Fisheries Board, in Dun Laoghaire, will not be moving to Clonakilty in Co Cork as proposed by the minister responsible for decentralisation, Tom Parlon.

They have nothing against the County Cork town, but Curraoin says she and her colleagues are quite content to continue working in the south Dublin seaport.

"This happened overnight without any consultation or negotiation, " she recalls of the plan to make her move. "We arrived for work one morning in December 2003 to be told that we will all have to uproot our families, sell our houses and move 150 miles to Cork. It makes no sense and we're not going. My husband also works in Dublin and like most people we have a mortgage on a house in nearby Bray, " she says. "The cost of moving would be enormous, not to mention the possibility of losing half the household income.

Has the minister considered that? I don't have kids but most of my colleagues do. Are we supposed to pluck children out of school, abandon our elderly parents, sell our houses and uproot ourselves from the community, because Parlon thinks it's a good idea?" asks Curraoin.

Three years ago this week, the then Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, used his last budget to announce that, within 36 months, around 7,000 civil servants in government departments and around 2,500 semi-state workers would have moved to 58 selected towns outside the capital.

It was supposed to be a vote-winner, a farewell present to Fianna Fail from McCreevy before he left for a job with the European Commission.

Instead it has been a disaster.

Although many people recognise the merits of 'rebalancing' our lopsided economy , McCreevy forgot to factor in one important element . . . the workers whose lives would be irrevocably disrupted.

"The government is treating its staff like Smarties, to be doled out for political expediency, " was how one public service trade union leader dismissed McCreevy's plan.

Three years on, just 500 of the promised 10,000 public servants are sitting behind their decentralised desks. And most of these are working in temporary accommodation as ministers rush to get at least parts of decentralisation up and running before the election next summer.

In this regard, Brian Cowen, who is in overall charge of decentralisation, was fastest off the blocks. Last October the finance minister opened the first multimillion-euro purpose-built office building for staff in his own department. One hundred and thirty-five of them are scheduled to move to Cowen's home town of Tullamore and 112 are already in situ.

Last month, the government-appointed Decentralisation Implementation Group promised that over 2,000 public servants would be in place in 29 locations by the end of 2007. In the unlikely event that this is achieved, it will still leave the plan 80% under target and one year late. The latest target date for getting all 10,000 public servants out of Dublin is now 2010, four years behind schedule.

The core problem for the government is that not nearly enough of their employees working in Dublin have signed up to move to the towns selected to host their jobs. While the latest figures show that over 10,672 have signed up to move, just over 5,000 of these are public servants who are already working outside Dublin and who are grabbing the opportunity to get a job even closer to home. This means that around 5,000 public servants in Dublin who are due to move don't want to. And given that they had three years to consider a move, this long list of public servants is unlikely to get shorter.

"In the three years since the government announced BIM was to move to Clonakilty, not one of the 93 staff in Dun Laoghaire has volunteered, " says Curraoin.

An active member of Siptu, which strongly opposes decentralisation, Curraoin says that of the 2,250 workers in state agencies . . . including BIM, Fas and Bus Eireann . . . who are due to move, just 46, or 2%, have volunteered to go.

"Our members will not be treated as political pawns in this debacle, " says Owen Reidy of Siptu, which represents workers in BIM and all the other state agencies earmarked to move out of Dublin.

And Curraoin and her colleagues at BIM are gearing up to make their point where it hurts . . .in the marginals. "We will be vigorously campaigning on decentralisation in the run-up to the election, " she warns.

While Curraoin acknowledges the move is voluntary, she is still worried about what will happen to her if her job and the office is moved to Clonakilty.

"Unlike civil servants working in government departments, specialist semi-state workers can't transfer to other government jobs. I'm five years in BIM. I don't have any options if my job is decentralised, " says Curraoin. "We have highly qualified marine biologists here. Where are they going to go?"

This highlights the other major headache for Parlon and the government. Of the 5,500 Dublinbased public servants who have volunteered to move, fewer than 1,000 of these will be doing the same jobs they are doing now. If the government presses ahead with decentralisation, it risks losing the expertise of its specialist staff.

Already the probation and welfare service has abandoned plans to move to Navan because none of its experienced probation officers was willing to go. The service had enough applications to make the move, but they were from public servants in other departments and agencies who had no experience in probation work.

Similarly, none of the specialist staff in the Irish Aid section of the Department of Foreign Affairs has agreed to move to Limerick. The section now faces the loss of senior staff who have built years of experience dealing with African governments.

Having taken the decentralisation baton from McCreevy with such enthusiasm three years ago, Parlon now finds that not only have the promised 10,000 public servants failed to materialise in time for the election, but the ambitious plan has angered the staff he is trying to persuade.

"Next summer we will be using our vote to make our point, unless Parlon sees sense in the interim, " warns Curraoin.