The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has told the social partners the number of places on Community Employment (CE) schemes will be cut by 2,500 this year.
According to its original action plan to tackle unemployment the department had indicated 760 places would be dropped.
After a meeting of the social partners with senior departmental officials yesterday, the general secretary of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, Mr Mike Allen, said the Government was failing to live up to its commitment under Partnership 2000 to provide an additional 10,000 training places for the long-term unemployed.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions' representative at the meeting, Ms Paula Carey, said the proposal to divert resources from the long-term unemployed was "totally unacceptable".
Both organisations say they will raise the issue at the next plenary session of Partnership 2000 on January 26th, if the department does not come back with a satisfactory response in the meantime.
Mr Allen also criticised the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation for failing to attend yesterday's meeting. IBEC was "constantly complaining about the lack of recruits for the labour market", he said.
"There are 94,000 long-term unemployed on the Live Register and they should be the next round of recruits for Irish industry, but when a meeting is called to discuss the issue IBEC didn't bother to turn up."
IBEC's director of economic affairs, Mr Brian Geoghegan, said he resented Mr Allen's remarks. IBEC was constantly attending meetings to discuss unemployment.
Yesterday's meeting had been sought by the INOU to clarify issues with the department. Its terms of reference were widened only when the ICTU expressed an interest in attending. Other commitments had forced IBEC to withdraw at the last minute.
Besides the additional cuts in CE places, Mr Allen and Ms Carey also criticised the Government for trying to claim that the 5,200 places being provided in jobs clubs would account for over half of the commitment given under Partnership 2000.
Jobs clubs provide 4,800 places for all unemployed people and 400 specifically aimed at lone parents.
The clubs give unemployed people access to office facilities to contact employers, help with preparing CVs and coaching in interview skills. They last four weeks.
Such programmes were useful for the "job ready", Mr Allen said, but they were not suitable for the long-term unemployed, who need training placements.
"To have a question over the delivery of those places and a reduction in CE programmes at the same time is very difficult for us to accept."
Ms Carey said the jobs clubs were welcome as an additional resource to tackle unemployment, but were not acceptable as a substitute for providing the long-term unemployed with the skills needed to become "job ready. It is totally unacceptable for the Government to replace a year's commitment to someone who is long-term unemployed on a CE programme with a four-week scheme".
A spokesman for the department said it had promised to consider the points made by the ICTU and INOU before the plenary session of Partnership 2000. The nature of unemployment was changing and the numbers of unemployed were falling. The Government had recently introduced a number of initiatives aimed at the long-term unemployed, such as the new £25 a week allowance to help those opting for specific skills training rather than CE schemes.