asked the Minister for Finance when applications for grants in respect of the year 1976 under the EEC Regional Fund scheme will be considered; the latest date for receipt of such applications; and whether these grants will be allocated on a regional or county basis for 1976.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - EEC Regional Fund.
9.
Consideration by the Commission of the European Communities of applications for assistance from the European Regional Development Fund is an on-going process. There are, therefore, no specified dates for the receipt of applications from member States in any one year. Decisions on applications are taken by the Commission at quarterly intervals following consultation with the fund management committee. In general, the Commission require two to three months at least to process an application for fund assistance. Indeed, I may say for the information of the Deputy that work is already in hands on the identification of projects for submission to the Commission against our 1976 fund commitment allocation of £13.46 million.
The fund supplements the resources at the disposal of the Government for regional development investment. Any proposals for assistance for projects out of these resources should be submitted to the appropriate Government Department or agency directly concerned with the project. In this connection, I must remind Deputies that the fund as it is presently constituted represents little more than a marginal addition to the resources which the Government have at their disposal for development purposes. The fund's impact on our needs will, for the present, be extremely limited but we hope to see it rapidly increasing in significance in future years.
Finally, I would refer the Deputy to the reply which I gave to an earlier question tabled by him on 9th April, 1975—Official Report, Volume 279, columns 1215-7—in which I indicated that the regional fund was not being administered on a regional or county basis. The fund will, however, be used to increase development investment particularly in the less-developed areas of the country.
Would the Minister say whether he intends to canvass firms, companies and local authorities during the coming year as he did in the past year to allow their names to be used as having received money out of the EEC Regional Development Fund?
The same steps will be taken to obtain the leave of industrial concerns to mention their projects in the list of projects going to the European Commission. The Deputy will appreciate that in relation to Industrial Development Authority assistance applied for or given, confidentiality is maintained and it is only where permission is given to use a particular application that such information is then furnished to the Commission.
I would ask the Minister a specific supplementary. Does he intend to canvass firms in the coming year as he did during the past year to have their names used?
The Deputy has already asked that question. The Deputy is indulging in repetition.
I have already explained most clearly to the Deputy——
Will the Minister listen to my supplementary question?
The Deputy is repeating himself. I am simply repeating the answer.
Could I ask the Minister a supplementary question?
I would advise the Deputy that he may not indulge in repetition.
I am asking the Minister whether he intends to canvass firms and companies and local authorities in the coming year, the same as he did in the past year——
We are having repetition.
——with a view to having their names used in respect of the receipt of money out of the EEC Regional Fund?
The consent of local authorities is not required because what local authorities receive from the national Exchequer is well known but in relation to industrial grants and assistance given to private firms confidentiality, in fairness to those firms, must be preserved and their names may only be used with their consent. That is the only reason why industrial concerns have been invited in the past to allow their names to be listed in connection with regional projects applications to the European Commission. It is in the interests of this country that such firms would allow their names to be used in order that we, as we must, would ultimately be in a position to prove that money has been expended in Ireland for the purposes in respect of which the European Commission makes payments.
Is the Minister aware that firms' and companies' names were used during the past year who had already been paid a few years ago and that local authorities' names were used in the list supplied by him——
No.
——who had already been paid grants two or three years ago?
I am not so aware. I suggest it is time the Opposition and their friends outside this House cease their efforts to denigrate this country. Last week I received a phone call from Commissioner Thomson of the EEC deploring a report which had been issued by one of the friends of Deputy O'Leary purporting to give an account of a meeting which they had with Commissioner Thomson and Commissioner Thomson said that what he said to the persons who met him was quite the reverse of what they gave to the Press when they left him and he was angry that people who had sought an audience with him should have misused that occasion in order to utter untruths about what he said to them. He commended once again the Government's handling of the whole regional fund and he expressed the wish as he has publicly on several occasions in the past, that other countries would handle it as well as the Irish Government.
On a point of order, would the Minister be more specific in the comments he is making about a particular Press release?
That is not a point of order.
I think it is.
It is not, Deputy.
He should inform the House of what he is speaking.
It is not a point of order.
As I understood the Minister, he denied in response to a supplementary question from Deputy O'Leary that firms or local authorities had been publicly referred to as having received money from the EEC Regional Fund who, in fact, had received the money some time previously out of Exchequer resources. Am I misrepresenting the Minister in understanding him in that way?
What I said was, and what I now repeat is, that the consent of local authorities to name them in relation to grants for regional fund purposes is not required. The consent of private firms is required before their names may be disclosed to outside authorities and the reason for this confidentiality is to respect the privacy of the private firms in question.
With respect, that is not the question I put to the Minister. Could I ask the Minister if he would either confirm or deny that firms have been named publicly as having received money from the EEC Regional Fund who did not, in fact, receive such money but received their grants and other moneys involved from the Exchequer some years ago?
I have said what is the truth of what the Commission require, that the Exchequer must prove that it has paid out of the national Exchequer moneys for specific purposes before any payment can be received by Ireland under the Regional Fund Scheme. This necessarily requires that payment must be made in respect of the purposes for which regional fund assistance is sought, and, as one year follows another, the amount of money spent in Ireland will increase by virtue of the assistance received from the regional fund.
May we take it——
I want to deal with some other questions.
Yes, sir. May we take it that the Minister is not denying that firms and local authorities were named as receiving EEC Regional Fund moneys who did not receive them, for whatever reason? May we also take it, therefore, that the Minister's denial of this point to Deputy O'Leary, which was followed by his long, and, I would suggest irrelevant reference to Commissioner Thomson, was unjustified, and that the correct position is that such firms and local authorities were so named and did not, in fact, receive any money from the EEC Regional Fund?
I can excuse some of the people behind Deputy Colley——
Yes or no?
——for not understanding the position, but one cannot excuse Deputy Colley, who knows well that Brussels does not make specific payments to particular operations in Ireland, in Italy, in Germany, in France or anywhere else. All it does is to pay out money to the national government in question which amounts to a supplement on what that government would otherwise spend on regional projects in its own country. It can only pay out such money when it receives proof to its satisfaction that the money has already been spent by the national government. Whatever about Deputy Colley or the begrudging Opposition here, the important thing is that the EEC who pay out the money and do not pay it out unless they are satisfied the money has been spent, are paying the money to Ireland, are paying the money to Ireland before anybody else and have urged the other eight member countries of the EEC to follow the example of Ireland so that the regional fund may be got off the ground and operated properly.
So Deputy O'Leary was right?
A final supplementary from Deputy Herbert.
Would the Minister publish the amount of aid given to each individual infrastructural project in 1976?
All the information it is possible to publish in relation to the EEC Regional Fund will be published in due course.
Why was this publicity not given to the 1975 allocations?
All information which it is possible to publish will be published in due course when the EEC themselves complete their processing of 1975 fund applications which they will not do until the next meeting of the committee in December, 1975. It could possibly be 1976 before the whole processing operation is complete.
Is the Minister not aware that this vital information was given by each member state of the EEC except Ireland?
That is not so, for the simple reason that there is no country as far advanced as Ireland is in relation to the operation of the regional fund, so they could not publish what they have not yet done.
I have called the next question on a number of occasions.
(Interruptions.)
There is a fiddle going on.
The Chair has given the utmost latitude in regard to supplementaries. Question No. 10.