The state body charged with helping to oversee the implementation of decentralisation had to call a halt to plans to move 38 of its own warehouse staff to Claremorris in Co Mayo after it received just two applications for the posts, new documents obtained by the Sunday Tribune have revealed.

Due to a previous decision to allocate the site of the existing warehouse in Dublin to affordable housing, the Office of Public Works also had to seek an alternative Dublin site to meet the "immediate urgent needs" of the office in question, its Central Engineering Workshop.

But despite the government's decision last July to pause the purchase of office accommodation for the decentralisation programme, the Office of Public Works received provisional authorisation later that month to proceed to tender stage for permanent accommodation for 104 other staff at a separate regional office in the town.

In a letter sent to the Department of Finance in May of this year, Vincent Campbell, director of Corporate Services with the OPW, informed the department that it was not in a position to progress plans to locate a warehouse facility for the government's Central Engineering Workshop (CEW) and some Government Supplies Agency (GSA) material.

This would have attracted some 38 posts, he said.

"As there are no applicants, save two, on the CEW/GSA warehouse side of the proposition – OPW is not in a position to progress this element of the proposal at this stage," he said.