With your permission a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos.45 to 48, inclusive, together.
Funds to assist underdeveloped regions within the enlarged European Economic Community will be available from a number of sources, some already in existence and some in the process of being established.
As a member of the European Economic Community we shall have access to the funds of the European Investment Bank whose function it is to grant loans and give guarantees in order to facilitate, inter alia, projects for developing less-developed regions.
Regional development can also be assisted through the intervention of the European Social Fund which can make its resources available to deal with employment problems in less-developed regions.
Contributions are also available from the Community's Agricultural Fund towards certain expenditures entailed in implementing the Community directives on the structural reform of agriculture. In addition, individual production and marketing may, subject to certain conditions, qualify for financial contributions from the Agricultural Fund.
In March, 1972, the Council of the Community agreed in principle to the use of the Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund for regional development purposes through the improvement of agricultural structures in priority areas such as the West of Ireland. The Council has undertaken to adopt the necessary decisions to give effect to this agreement by the end of 1972.
At the Summit Conference in Paris last week the Heads of State or Government invited the institutions of the Community to create a Regional Development Fund financed from the Community's own resources. In doing so the Heads of Government or State expressed the view that intervention by the Regional Development Fund, in co-ordination with national aids, should permit, progressively, with the realisation of economic and monetary union, the correction of the main regional imbalances in the enlarged Community, and particularly those resulting from the preponderance of agriculture and from industrial change and structural under-employment.