The Green Party has called on the Government to announce the arrangements for decentralisation which it promised to publish by the end of May.
Party leader Mr Trevor Sargent was ruled out of order when he asked for a debate on the locations and arrangements.
He claimed they were not going to be announced until after the local and European elections.
He asked if there had been a "shifting of the sands and if the debate was being put back".
The opposition expressed its outrage that the Government had rejected attempts on Wednesday to hold an Oireachtas hearing into the plans to decentralise 10,000 civil servants out of Dublin.
Fine Gael deputy leader Mr Richard Bruton said the location of the public service should not be "decided by the Government on a political whim for electoral reasons".
The Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service voted down the right of the Oireachtas to hold the hearing and scrutinise the decentralisation programme.
"This is a programme on which there has been no debate in the Dáil, no vote in the Dáil, no Government memorandum presented, no strategic policy paper presented, and no assessment of how it fits into the spatial strategy."
If there were lessons and modifications to be made, the Oireachtas should have the opportunity to suggest them and have the case heard.
However, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said that the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, had put down a motion a year ago in the Dáil calling for 10,000 civil servants to be decentralised.
"In the course of that debate he said he felt the number could be 18,000 who wanted to move out of Dublin.
"I did not know why Fine Gael is suddenly taking a different view of this," she said.
But Mr Bruton replied that "this political slur that the Tánaiste has learnt from her Fianna Fáil colleagues does her no justice".
Former Labour leader Mr Ruairí Quinn said that the committee chairman had agreed to the proposal for such a session to take place.
It would be a "structured debate in a manner acceptable to all. However, he then got instructions from somewhere else in this House to reverse that decision". Mr Quinn said that the Ceann Comhairle had a duty to protect the interests of the House and the Labour TD asked "if he can indicate if such a reversal of a procedure is in accord with the rules of the House. I do not think it is".
The Ceann Comhairle, Dr Rory O'Hanlon, said he would need to have notices and "cannot adjudicate ad hoc on the floor of the House and would not attempt to do so".
Mr Sargent had asked for details "regarding the locations and specific arrangements for the decentralisation of large sections of the Civil Service and to require the Government to evaluate and take on board the impact of its non-consultative approach on the many staff involved as well as the effect on the efficient workings of the Civil Service in general".
