Fianna Fáil backbenchers defended the Government's decentralisation plan at a Dáil committee hearing today.
The Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service heard submissions from a number of academics, from senior civil servants of two Government deparments and from two local authorities based in areas designated as decentralisation zones.
Carlow-Kilkenny TD Mr MJ Nolan said the "body of opinion" he was hearing was very much in favour of what the Government was trying to do in its decentralisation plan.
Mr Ned O'Keeffe, Fianna Fáil TD for Cork East, said there was plenty of precedent for the current decentralisation plan, including the CSO's move to Cork some years ago, which had been "an outstanding success".
He complimented the Minister for Finance on the plan and said much of rural Ireland needed the status it would bring.
The committee chairman, Fianna Fáil's Mr Sean Fleming, said the decentralisation plan was implementing a policy which had been set out in advance of the last general election and that it had therefore been "voted on by the people".
"There's a democratic mandate for this decision," he said.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said the first thing that made him very uneasy was that the plan had been announced in the Budget.
There was no strategic plan and no attempt to make the decentralisation plan "fit" with the National Spatial Strategy or with the human resources needs of the agencies involved.
He said Government ministers were now going "in every direction" on the issue and that even ministers "haven't a clue" about the Government's strategy objectives and were "flapping about trying to respond".
Mr Bruton asked for information on how the Cabinet sub-committee on decentralisation had reached its decision and on how it had rated the various towns involved in the plan.
Labour's Ms Roisín Shortall said the reality of the decentralisation plan was that it was "a political stroke" and that the word "decentralisation" was "a complete and utter misnomer" for what the Government wants to do.
It had been used to detract attention from a lacklustre and unimaginative Budget last December.
Ms Shortall said ministers were making "crass" attempts to claim responsibility in their constituencies for "giving out the goodies" to the regional towns.
She added that the plan was "extremely likely to lead to fragmented government.
Responding to questions from the members, Prof Michael J Bannon of UCD said the process by which the decentralisation plan was arrived at should have been made public from that democratic mandate onwards.
The issue was not about the numbers being moved but about whether it was possible to be sure the effectiveness and efficiency of government was not being damaged.
Unless this was certain, the Government should "tread very carefully".