The Dáil Committee on Finance and the Public Service will consider the Government's decentralisation proposals, the Tánaiste assured the House.
Ms Harney insisted that she had already told the Dáil, last week or perhaps the week before, that she favoured the committee examining the issue.
"There was no instruction from the Government to the committee, to the best of my knowledge, not to consider it." She was replying, on the Order of Business, to opposition deputies.
The Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said he would oppose proposals on the Order of Business unless the Tánaiste could give an undertaking to the House, "following the outrageous misrepresentation on radio this morning by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon", that the committee would have the support of the Government parties to scrutinise and examine the proposals for decentralisation.
Mr Rabbitte said that Mr Parlon had told the nation that the proposal put to the committee would have involved politics before the local and European elections. "However, the motion put to the committee was to allow for a two-day examination after the elections, sometime in June or July. The Minister of State's comment is a gross misrepresentation of what happened."
The Fine Gael deputy leader, Mr Richard Bruton, said: "It was enough to make a cat laugh to hear the Minister of State describe the committee's attempt to have hearings as an attempt to politicise the issue of decentralisation. This is the man who brought decentralisation into the political arena in a way that is almost unprecedented."
Mr Bruton said that this was "cowboy politics". Decentralisation was introduced in the House under cover of the Budget, he added. "There has been no strategic plan, human resource plan, regional context or spatial plan context within which this is being developed. When senior civil servants, rightly, through their union, brought the matter to our attention, the Minister for Finance accused them of manipulating the media to try to block the measure.
"This is a political project which has been driven through the Dáil without scrutiny."
Mr Bruton said the Tánaiste, and those who backed her on the Government benches, had contrived to obstruct a sensible assessment by the Oireachtas of the proposals.
The approach of "act now and think later" would damage the State, he added. "We will damaged our public service through the decentralisation model."
The Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, called for a Dáil debate on the issue.
"This is a matter that is being debated outside this House at length. It has an impact on people who are not getting an answer in the public service to what will happen when they volunteer to remain where they are, as it is claimed that they will be able to do.
"The answer has not been forthcoming as to what will happen to them. It is appropriate that this issue is debated in the House, as it is being debated widely throughout the country."