A SENIOR official is facing the sack for allegedly undermining the decentralisation of an agency to the minister for defence’s home town.

Michael Ryan, the chairman of the Civil Defence Board, is fighting efforts by Michael Smith, the defence minister, to dismiss him, and the row seems destined for the High Court. Ryan has been accused of questioning the government’s decision to move the board to Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

Smith, the most senior member of the cabinet, requested Ryan’s resignation last month but the former director of Plassey Technological Park in Co Limerick refused to step down.

Ryan, a business consultant and former garda, has now called in solicitors to help him in the fight for control of the 6,000-strong volunteer body. He has been accused by the Department of Defence of attempting to undermine Smith’s decision, approved by cabinet, to decentralise the headquarters of the Civil Defence Board to north Tipperary, Smith’s constituency.

Last month the minister asked David O’Callaghan, secretary-general of his department, to investigate how Ryan was dispensing his duties as chairman of the year-old board.

The civil servant reported back on May 4 that he believed Ryan had “sought to undermine the decision of the minister for defence . . . in relation to the decentralisation of civil defence to Roscrea”. He said Ryan had: o Ridiculed the choice of site for a new headquarters. o Told the annual meeting of the Civil Defence Officers’ Association that he planned to fill the post of chief civil defence officer “without sanction” from the department. o Sought legal opinion, at a cost of ¤4,598, on whether the minister was transgressing the powers or authority of Civil Defence, which is responsible for non-combatant responses to attacks on the state.

The government’s decentralisation programme, which will involve departments based in the capital moving to towns around the country, has hit a number of hurdles. Designed as a vote-getting initiative in rural Ireland, it has proved to be hugely unpopular among Dublin-based public servants. The government insists that the scheme is voluntary and that workers will be allowed to decide whether they want to move and to where.

The board’s move to Roscrea was in train even before Charlie McCreevy’s announcement on decentralisation in last December’s budget.

Ryan’s lawyers are preparing to argue that the actions complained of by the minister and his department were taken by the board of the organisation and not by Ryan personally.

Specifically, they will say it was the Civil Defence Board that decided to commission legal opinion. The legal advice given to the board was that Smith and his department had acted beyond their powers in relation to budgetary and staffing matters, and on the issue of decentralisation.

Ryan enjoys strong support among the country’s 32 civil defence officers and also has significant backing on the board, formed under new legislation 12 months ago.

A source close to Ryan said that the board had never objected to the decentralisation of about 30 staff from Ratra House in Dublin’s Phoenix Park to Roscrea. But managers had argued against the long-term suitability of the building leased in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Roscrea by the Office of Public Works.

Ryan had proposed the creation of a School of Civil Defence, offering diplomas and degree courses in emergency management, on the campus of the organisation’s headquarters. He said the leased building would be unsuitable for this.

Smith declined to comment yesterday, saying the issue was now a legal matter. Ryan would not comment beyond confirming that he had left the matter in the hands of his lawyers.

One civil defence officer said of Ryan yesterday: “He is the best thing to happen to the Civil Defence in years. He sees work and goes after it. He works twice as fast as a civil servant and that’s the problem, but he certainly has the support of the Civil Defence Officers’ Association.”

Set up in 1950, Civil Defence was designed to undertake non-combatant activities and defend against the effects of an attack on the state, or “hazards such as radioactive fallout or biological or chemical warfare”. It was given a statutory basis in 2002.

The organisation has 6,000 volunteer members trained in first aid, rescue, fire fighting, emergency feeding, evacuee care, land and water search and radiation monitoring.

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