FINE GAEL finance spokesman Richard Bruton estimated that €27.5 million had been wasted on deferred decentralisation projects.
He claimed that people in the regions had been "sold a pup" and that there was no proper planning of the process from the start. Mr Bruton asked Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan if he felt "some shame turning up in Cavan, where there were to be 244 jobs, Donegal 283, Waterford 431 or Cork 840?"
Mr Lenihan insisted that the decentralisation programme was not dead, but priority had to be given to certain matters in light of the country's changed economic circumstances.
"The Government's latest decision means that 6,000 posts were decentralised outside Dublin," said Mr Lenihan. "That is an impressive figure in terms of the decentralisation programme."
Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said the majority of the 6,000 were people outside of Dublin who wanted to relocate from one place to another in the provinces.
She said that the Minister should apologise to taxpayers for the waste of money.
"The money could have been used in those towns for hospitals, teachers and all sorts of facilities," said Ms Burton.
"Instead, it has gone to developers and landlords to rent offices so that a few ghost figures in the Civil Service can rattle around in."
She said that like Japanese soldiers after the (second World) war, there were "poor civil servants rattling around buildings on their own, not knowing that decentralisation is over".
Mr Lenihan said that overall, the Office of Public Works had spent about €250 million, to the end of September, on property.
The total income from property disposed of in Dublin, to the end of last year, he said, was €355 million.
"On the capital side, the State has been a very successful developer in this context," he added.
