Less than 10 per cent of the 10,000 civil servants earmarked for decentralisation will have moved by December 2006, the Government said today.
A spokesman for the Department of Finance said "the bones of 1,000" people will be in situ by the target date with the largest move being the Department of Social and Family Affairs moving to Carrick-on-Shannon.
The spokesman also said around 100 civil servants will have moved by the end of this year, including 50 to Portlaoise, Co Laois.
Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Tom Parlon, said decentralisation would continue "full steam ahead".
He said that five major projects were due to be finished by the first quarter of 2007 and that he hoped, "with a bit of wind at our back" to have in excess of 1,000 civil servants moved by the end of 2006.
The five projects include, the Prison Services moving to Longford, the Department of Marine moving to Drogheda, the Revenue moving to Newcastle West, Department of Transport moving to Loughrea and the Department of Foreign Affairs moving to Limerick.
Meanwhile, opposition parties criticised the Government over their decentralisation plans.
Fine Gael spokesman Richard Bruton said: "The tragedy is that the great potential of decentralisation has been placed at risk by the Government’s ham-fisted handling of the project."
"In many locations only a tiny percentage of those being assigned are coming from Dublin at all," he added.
"The best thing that they could do now is accept that the original proposal is unrealisable and return to the drawing board with a view to drawing up a plan, in consultation with public service workers, that is realistic and deliverable," Labour party spokeswoman Joan Burton said.
Green party leader Trevor Sargent said called the Government’s decentralisation plan a "cynical ploy" aimed at electoral gain.
"The coalition Government’s decentralisation announcement was conceived first and foremost in the hope that it would shore up local constituencies with the promise of thousands of new jobs for the Local Elections last June," Mr Sargent said.
"This ploy has now spectacularly back-fired," he added.
