The Government yesterday rejected a Labour Party claim that it had further postponed the deadline for public servants to apply for decentralised positions.
Civil servants and State agency staff had until Tuesday of this week to submit priority applications under the decentralisation programme announced last year.
Figures showing how many have applied for jobs in each department or agency are to be published before the end of next week.
Unions claim, however, that the take-up is unlikely to be much greater than in July, when preliminary figures showed a poor level of interest in the project.
Only 292 State agency staff in Dublin had applied to fill the 2,200 positions to be moved to provincial locations.
There was more interest among civil servants, with 2,200 of those based in Dublin applying for the 6,300 new regional positions.
Applications are made through the web-based Central Applications Facility (CAF), established by the Government in May.
Those who applied before Tuesday's cut-off date will have priority over later applicants, but the CAF remains open for applications.
A Department of Finance spokesman said it was intended to publish the latest figures by Friday of next week - 10 days after the cut-off date.
The Department, he said, needed to take time to analyse the figures and "put them up the line" to the decentralisation implementation group before publishing them. The delay was criticised by Labour's finance spokeswoman, Ms Joan Burton TD, who accused the Government of "staying mum" on the numbers applying.
"It now appears that the decentralisation application deadline may be extended for another three or four weeks," she said.
The Department spokesman, however, said this was incorrect. It had always been intended that applications would continue beyond the September 7th cut-off date.
SIPTU's State agencies branch secretary, Mr Owen Reidy, said he expected there would be "very little difference" between the figures published in July and those due next week.
"People in the State agencies sector are as hostile to the Government's plan today as they were a number of months ago."
SIPTU, which represents 1,350 of the 2,200 State agency staff concerned, has advised members to boycott the CAF and not to co-operate with the decentralisation programme.
