The Dublin city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, has blamed the Government's decentralisation plans for undermining the city council's attempts to attract people to live close or near to the city centre, writes Liam Reid.
Mr Fitzgerald, the most senior official in local administration in the country, said that attempts to lure up to 10,000 civil servants out of Dublin had created a misleading impression that there was no quality of life in the capital.
While he did not comment on the merits of decentralisation, or its potential impact on the city in lost revenue if it goes ahead, he said that an inadvertent side-effect of the Government's efforts to promote decentralisation was to create a negative image of living in the city.
"Decentralisation is Government policy, and that's a matter for Government," he told The Irish Times.
"But when we are working so heavily on promoting inner-city living, and by inner-city living I mean within five or six miles of the city centre, it would be unfortunate if, as a side-effect of the decentralisation debate, our efforts were undermined." He said he believed this had already begun to happen.
Mr Fitzgerald is the most senior civil servant to voice concerns about the handling by the Government of its decentralisation plans.
It is believed that some senior civil servants have concerns about aspects of the plans, although none has voiced their views.
Government efforts to entice civil servants to move from the city have met with little success to date, with just over 2,600 - a quarter of all the numbers required - having expressed an interest in moving from Dublin.
Mr Fitzgerald said that the arguments in favour of decentralisation "promoted country living in favour of urban living on the basis that you don't have any quality of life if you live in the city centre.
"I believe people are being convinced by this argument, and that is not in anybody's interest," he said.
Mr Fitzgerald made his comments during the announcement of a major new town centre for the Cherry Orchard area which will include up to 5,000 new houses and apartments, less than five miles from Dublin city centre.
He said the council had set a target of 6,000 new homes every year in the council area, which stretches from Finglas in the north to Donnybrook in the south.