All Cabinet Ministers knew for "many, many months" that the proposals for decentralisation would be announced during the Budget, the Minister for Finance insisted in the Dáil and claimed this had been misrepresented.
Mr McCreevy, who described the plan's progress as "full speed ahead", said that every Minister was consulted on "many occasions" about the relocation of various offices and he stressed that some Ministers decided to consult their civil servants and others chose not to. Final decisions on the locations of state agencies were, however, made by the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, he said.
Mr McCreevy also noted that "my colleague Gordon Brown announced in his Budget speech last week a decentralisation programme for UK civil servants".
This was a vindication, Mr McCreevy said, against unfavourable comments that "I should not have included anything to do with decentralisation".
Rejecting Opposition claims of lack of consultation and planning, he said the December 2006 target date was three years from the Budget announcement and seven years from the time he originally promised decentralisation.
"The plan is on course, the scheme is voluntary, the consultation has taken place with unions, and it's full speed ahead".
Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Sinn Féin's finance spokesman, referred to the SIPTU survey of its 1,000 public service members, 95 per cent of whom opposed leaving the greater Dublin area.
He described it as just the latest example of the "ongoing unravelling" of the Minister's decentralisation proposal, and the lack of planning.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman Mr Richard Bruton said the Minister's proposals "beat to an electoral drum".
He had made it a matter "of personal electoral interest for himself and fellow Ministers".
