Union leaders continued to express serious concern about aspects of the Government's decentralisation programme yesterday, despite assurances in the implementation group's report.
They welcomed commitments in the report on the career prospects of staff remaining in Dublin, but said there was still no indication how such commitments would be delivered.
The report also failed to adequately address concerns about the quality of services to be provided to the public, it was claimed.
Mr Seán Ó Riordáin, general secretary of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants, said the report had taken an "it will be all right on the night" approach to the issue of service delivery.
He said his response to the report could be an initial one only as unions had not been provided, as promised, with advance notice of its contents.
"That is consistent with the Government's approach on this issue. The last people to be told anything are the unions," he said.
The report had met one of the two key concerns raised by his union, which was the need for a survey to ascertain the views of staff. "It is being done in reverse, of course. Why not ask where people want to go, before choosing the locations, instead of picking the locations first? But we have pressed for a survey and the survey is recommended, which is welcome."
The other main area of concern for the AHCPS was that of service delivery. The report had acknowledged the problems, but only in a cursory way, he said.
Mr Peter Nolan of IMPACT, the State's biggest public sector union, said the report contained little comfort for staff and service users who faced "massive disruption" because of the Government's approach to decentralisation.
"The Central Applications Facility, which is supposed to facilitate transfers from next month, will expose the absence of volunteers within the departments earmarked for decentralisation.
"That means we are facing massive and disruptive inter-departmental transfers if the Government is to meet its target of decentralisation over the next three years," he said. "It's impossible to see how this can be done without hitting services."
Mr Nolan said the problem would be particularly acute in areas where specialist technical and professional skills were employed and the report had offered no solutions in this area.
