A senior trade union official has predicted "major confrontation" between unions and the Government over the decentralisation of a number of State agencies if the current plan is "pushed any further".
Mr John Tierney, national secretary of Amicus in Ireland, told the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service there had to be a "major rethink" of the proposal set out by the Minister for Finance last December to relocate 10,300 civil and public servants and State agency staff.
The union official claimed workers were being "threatened" that if they did not agree to move under the decentralisation programme they would lose their jobs.
Mr Tierney said Amicus represented around 400 professional staff in the State agencies who are affected by the proposal, including members in Enterprise Ireland, BIM and the Irish Energy Centre. They include scientists, economists and engineers.
Mr Tierney said these people worked in highly specialised multi-disciplinary teams and if these were broken up, the effectiveness of their operation would be "severely compromised", and they would become non-functional until new specialised staff could be recruited and trained.
The Amicus official emphasised that the union had supported decentralisation in the past. However, his members "completely reject" the current scheme, with no more than 2 per cent interested in moving.
The committee heard that just 7.5 per cent of the total number of affected civil servants and 2.5 per cent of the agency staff want to take up the relocated posts. However, among specialist staff in some areas, the figure is as low as zero.
Mr Peter Nolan of Impact said the union estimated that 92.5 per cent of specialist staff in the public sector were "untransferable".
Mr Mick Coffey of the Federated Union of Government Employees (FUGE), which represents the non-clerical grades - including cleaning workers, night watchmen and court criers - said the decentralisation plan would cause "serious disruption" to his members and their families.
Many members rely on rostered overtime and allowances specific to FUGE grades to supplement their low levels of basic pay. Mr Coffey said the Minister for Finance's claim that the majority of civil servants would make a financial gain through the sale of their homes on relocation was not true for his members.
"The age group for many of the people affected by the move will be 40 years and upwards, with long service in the same area of Government departments in Dublin, who are living in local authority housing, married with families who would be settled in their community." Many were surviving on income averaging €350 per week but supporting adult children at home.
Mr Roger Hannon was representing the Transport and Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), which represents the majority of the salaried staff grades in the CIÉ group, including Bus Éireann, which is affected by the decentralisation plan.
Under the programme, 200 Bus Éireann staff are to be tranferred from Dublin to Mitchelstown, Co Cork, but Mr Hannon said only 80 or 90 staff in Dublin, mainly employed at the head office in Broadstone, work in central services and that not all of these "could in any practical sense be decentralised".
Just one TSSA member has expressed any interest in moving to Mitchelstown and, at a meeting in Dublin, the members endorsed a motion that they are not interested in transferring anywhere and wish to exercise their option, voluntarily, to remain in Dublin in their current jobs.
"With no disrespect whatever to that location and the people living there, it is our deeply held conviction that no businessperson or company would choose Mitchelstown as a suitable head office for a bus company serving the entire country," Mr Hannon said.
Senator Joe O'Toole (Ind), remarked that what was about to be created by the decentralisation programme was "a total human resources mess".
All of the union representatives stressed they were not opposed to decentralisation in principle and noted previous programmes that had been successful.
The unions sought an independent report on the decentralisation and a number of representatives present sought further information on the rationale for the plan as it related to specific departments and agencies.
Mr Sean Fleming, the committee chairman, said the committee had not ruled out the possibility of asking for an independent report, as requested by a number of the unions, but said the body would decide on the issue in September after it had concluded its hearings.
The committee is due to hear from the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, who, as one union official told the meeting, may "ironically" be the only person connected to the decentralisation plan to have relocated by later this year, when he is to take up his post as EU Commissioner.