Decentralisation: Fine Gael would undertake a fundamental audit of the current decentralisation programme if elected to government.
Yesterday senior members of Fine Gael said the party was also willing to drop some decentralisation locations if the review shows them to be impractical for the departments or State agencies involved.
It agreed to "be honest in its assessment of where decentralisation is not possible".
Describing the current Government as "sluggish, resistant to change and wasteful", the party's finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, said the current administration's inadequacies were exemplified by its handling of the decentralisation issue.
"The greatest disservice that could be rendered to the case for decentralisation is to push ahead with a botched job," he said.
Mr Bruton also promised that the party would not move the core planning units of the eight departments proposed for decentralisation away from Dublin, on the basis that they were centrally involved in "coherent policy-making across government".
Speaking in support of the party's decentralisation policy, Cllr Bill Tormey of Finglas in Dublin referred to plans to move the Central Fisheries Board from Glasnevin to Cahirciveen and said the "mad moves must be binned".
Cllr Jim O'Leary of Dublin South described the plan as "sloppy and short-sighted". He claimed the Government was being deceitful in that Ministers have said it is a voluntary programme, but civil servants in decentralising departments were being blocked from promotion unless they agreed to decentralise and faced having their careers stymied if they decided to stay in Dublin.
Mr Bruton said the party would also take a "fundamentally different approach" to negotiations on a second round of benchmarking, committing the party to insisting on an agenda of reform from the Civil Service in terms of accountability, setting targets and monitoring of performance.
He also said that most of the promised tax cuts announced by the Progressive Democrats were actually in that party's 2002 election manifesto. He said the promised reduction in the higher tax rate from 42 per cent to 40 per cent, and the pledge to keep the value of tax credits in line with inflation, were yet to be implemented, though they were promised four years ago.
Fine Gael also outlined plans to overhaul Fás.
The party's enterprise spokesman, Phil Hogan, said Fine Gael would reform Fás towards providing "on-the job" retraining in industries that are in decline, and would "vastly increase the number of apprenticeship registrations, which increased by only 20 per cent between 2002 and 2004". He also announced plans for free training or education of six months or more for all unemployed people or early school-leavers.