The Government has been accused of not taking seriously its obligation to give local communities control over the spending of EU structural funds.
Members of the two new regional assemblies, set up to oversee spending under the forthcoming national development plan, claim that, as currently constituted, they will become merely "talking shops" with no real power. They say they will take their fight to Brussels if the Government does not meet their demand for greater local representation.
Both assemblies sent delegations last week to the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, demanding changes in the way they have been constituted, so local representatives can have more say in how funds are to be spent in their regions.
A response is expected today when the Southern and Eastern Regional Assembly holds its second meeting in Waterford.
A department spokesman indicated yesterday, however, that the reply is likely to be negative, and there will be no change in the way the assemblies have been set up.
The two assemblies were established recently to deal with the respective needs of the Border, Midland and Western Region, which has retained Objective 1 status for EU funding, and the remainder of the State.
Local representatives say they will not be adequately represented on the operational committees which will effectively be charged with running the assemblies' business.
These committees will be dominated by public servants rather than elected representatives. A wide range of bodies including An Post, CIE, the ESB, the health boards, local authorities and regional fisheries boards will be represented. The only politicians sitting on them will be the assembly chairpersons and the current chairpersons of the State's seven regional authorities.
A Waterford city councillor, Maurice Cummins (FG), a member of the cross-party delegation which met Mr McCreevy last week, said this was a totally inadequate level of representation given that regional authority chairpersons changed every 12 months.
In addition, such a person might not even be a member of the regional assembly on whose operational committee he or she will sit.
He claimed the Department of the Environment and Local Government had set up the assemblies so as to give the appearance of devolving power to the regions, while in fact Dublin-based bureaucrats would remain in control.
Another Southern and Eastern Assembly member, a Waterford councillor, Mary Greene (FG), said it was clear at its first meeting last month that, as currently constituted, the assembly was simply there to "rubber-stamp decisions made by the Minister".
If their concerns were not addressed, members would raise the matter with the European Commission, she said, acknowledging this could cause embarrassment for the Government.
Politicians in the south-east are particularly concerned that the new system will leave the region without an adequate input into how its development needs are addressed. They had already feared the region's needs would be lost in an assembly covering such a large area, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick.
"If we're pushing our case in a body that has little or no influence anyway, then what weight do we have at all?" asked Mr Quinlan.
A Department of Finance spokesman, however, said there was adequate local representation on the assemblies' operational and monitoring committees, which had been set up to accord with EU structural funds regulations.