The Government has conceded for the first time that it will not complete the decentralisation initiative within the three-year deadline laid down by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy.
As Labour claimed the slippage was the clearest indication yet that the plan was beginning to unravel, it emerged that the Government has projected spending some €450 million on property and building work to relocate dozens of offices from Dublin.
Such a sum far exceeds the "over €200 million" estimate which was mooted on radio yesterday by the Minister of State for Finance, Mr Tom Parlon, who has overall responsibility for the programme.
Mr Parlon insisted yesterday that an enormous amount of work had been completed. While the Government still intended to complete most of the initiative by 2006, he admitted that there could be a delay of up to a year due to EU procurement rules and construction time.
"In a worst case scenario, it could be the end of 2007 before the last department moves," he said on RTÉ radio.
The former Taoiseach and Fine Gael TD, Mr John Bruton, dismissed the relevance of the timing of the project and said the damage that decentralisation would do to the quality of the public service was being overlooked.
"It is a sign that we have all gone to live with Alice in Wonderland that the whole discussion about the plan to disperse half the public service, in 51 different distant locations, is all about secondary things," he said.
Labour's finance spokeswoman, Ms Joan Burton, said that "people in the locations chosen for decentralisation are beginning to realise that this will never happen, certainly not on the scale and in the timeframe promised".
"The level of opposition to the proposal within the public service remains as high as ever and it is clear that if the Government insists on going ahead with its plan, ministers will be moving to new locations on their own - or at best with a small number of more junior civil servants."
High-level sources in the civil service said yesterday that the project had had a negative impact on morale among senior officials in particular. "People are saying that we're being treated like political fodder," said one individual.
An Office of Public Works (OPW) spokeswoman said that the Government had projected net expenditure of €450 million on property and building work.
However, she said the sum in question did not account for receipts from property sales in Dublin. A one-acre site in Baggot Street recently yielded €22.5 million, she said. She said the OPW had already completed the acquisition of four properties and would complete the purchase of 22 more by the end of July.