The Government's plans to move 10,000 civil and public servants to offices throughout the State cannot be stopped, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has conceded.
Mr Kenny insisted that the decentralisation plan had been "appallingly planned" and threatened "chaos in the Civil Service".
However, the Fine Gael leader, in an interview with The Irish Times, said the Government should get on first with the most popular decentralisation transfers, such as to Knock, Co Mayo.
"I think you have got to get on with the ones that are agreed and are going to happen and that Knock will happen. There are quite a number of people from the west who want to go down to that region.
"They have the land acquired. Where it is very clear [ that it] can happen, we should get on with those," he said, though he would not go so far as to say that clear non-runners should be dropped.
"It is too glib to say that. It is an indication of a scheme, quickly announced and badly planned. I think you have got to assess what you can get out of it for the areas where that can actually happen."
Thousands of civil servants who refused to transfer would end up getting paid to do little or nothing in Dublin offices until they retired, Mr Kenny warned.
Under the latest figures released by the Department of Agriculture's central applications facility, 4,000 Dublin-based civil servants will not transfer with their jobs if the plan, originally due to end in December 2007, is completed.
Staff in the Department of Agriculture's offices in Davitt House, Castlebar, had been moved into overcrowded offices and left with little work to do because their functions had been transferred to Portlaoise, he claimed.
"The Castlebar staff would not move, contract workers were brought into Portlaoise in rented buildings and they brought in other livestock personnel from other regions and paid them overtime. "They have moved them down to the veterinary office, which is now overcrowded, which doesn't have the work for people. The thing is an utter shambles. Some people will be left sitting until they reach pension age, their experience and capability unused. If they continue the way that they are going, they will break the long memory of the public service."
The Government would have to agree to create well-staffed, Dublin-based Cabinet offices to service Ministers as senior officials would not transfer, he said.
