I am grateful to the Ceann Comhairle for affording me the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment, a matter Deputy Kemmy and his colleagues do not seem to want debated. I should like to share my time with Deputy Hogan.
Adjournment Debate. - ESRI Report Publication.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
We are given to understand that the Government will shortly submit to the European Community authorities in Brussels its proposals for the use of EC Structural and Cohesion Funds, for the next phase of EC action in this area. According to Government sources, the proposals will concern £8 billion of European Community money, £4 billion of national funds — apparently there is some doubt about the £8 billion of European Community money and the £4 billion of national funds will, of course, come either from the taxpayer or will be borrowed — and as yet unquantified amount of private capital over the period of this action.
Despite the size of these amounts and the fact that that programme will commit a very large proportion of our public capital programme for the period in question, it seems that the Government wants to avoid any parliamentary or public debate as to how we go about making these decisions, the strategies we should adopt and the programmes we should follow. It gives the lie to the Government's contention that it believes in open Government because the Government does not intend to tell us anything about how it will spend this money before it engages in a programme.
So far as we know the only systematic attempt made at the preparation of a coherent new programme took the form of a study carried out by the ESRI. So far as we know — we are dealing with rumours on this matter — this study covered the 1989-93 programmes and the consultants' reports which were prepared on those programmes and on the multitude of individual projects which they comprehended. Any such study could only be incomplete since it would obviously be far too early at this stage to have any kind of a proper assessment carried out on the later funded projects. Rumour has it that some serious and rather arbitrary restrictions were placed by the Government on the ESRI in the way it carried out that study. Whatever the truth of that may be, so far as I know the ESRI study is the only basis that exists for drawing any lessons from the 1989-93 programme and therefore for designing the next phase of the action. It seems however that the Government wants to keep it under wraps. We must ask why? Whom does the Government distrust? Is it the ESRI, the public service, this House or the general public? Or is it perhaps, more accurately, that the Government has very little confidence in itself and this makes it very reluctant to bring this issue forward?
Parts of that report have been leaked; it must be one of the most open secrets in public administration today. Significantly, the parts of the report that have been leaked have to do with proposals to remove moneys from the agricultural side in order to apply them elsewhere. If the leaks are accurate, both the ESRI and the Government have the wrong end of the stick in relation to agricultural payments and the headage payments in particular. The proposal seems to be to criticise headage payments because they are an income support measure. That is not a criticism. They are an income support measure and that is what they were intended to be from the very first day in 1977. The danger I see is that there is no automatic guarantee, should the Irish Government by its own decision remove funds from the headage payment side, that those funds will automatically be available for another use. Those funds are earmarked——
The Deputy indicated a desire to share his time and I have to tell him that it is nearly exhausted.
Anybody who wants to make a change in funding on that basis is incompetent and does not know what he is doing. In order to clear up the confusion I ask that the report be published immediately.
Deputy Hogan has just one minute.
I thank Deputy Dukes for sharing his time with me. I plead with the Government to publish the information that is obviously available in the ESRI's report on how the Structural Funds should be spent over the next six to seven years. It is distasteful and obscene that the national Parliament should be kept ignorant of information available on the drawing up of a national plan. Each Government Department should submit to this House a proposal on how these funds should be spent before anything is submitted to Brussels. We have to ensure that we get the most productive use from these funds in terms of jobs and the economy.
I appeal to the Minister to publish the documentation. There should not be anything to hide. If mistakes were made, let us hear about them so that they can be corrected before the national plan is submitted for the Structural Funds.
I thank Deputies Dukes and Hogan for giving me the opportunity to put on record, my position, and I thank you, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to speak on the matter.
As part of the work on preparing the National Development Plan, which will set out the Government's proposals for the use of EC Structural and Cohesion Funds in the period 1994-99, it was considered desirable to obtain an independent external view of the operation of the existing Community Support Framework for Structural Funds and on the strategy that might underpin the National Development Plan. Accordingly the Department of Finance decided to engage consultants to undertake an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Community Support Framework 1989-93 in contributing to Ireland's economic development and to make recommendations on: the strategy that should underpin the next National Development Plan; following from that strategy, the optimal mix of national programmes and measures to implement the strategy; and practical ways of providing for greater integration and complementarity of measures within programmes.
A number of firms and bodies were invited to put forward proposals to undertake the assignment. After a selection procedure, the Economic and Social Research Institute in conjunction with DKM Economic Consultants, G. Boyle, Centre for Agriculture and Food Policy Research, Maynooth College and Brendan Kearney and Associates were engaged in October 1992. This consultancy assignment has been completed recently and I am arranging to have a detailed summary made available publicly to facilitate the widespread debate on the preparation of the plan. Of course the ESRI study is but one input into the Government's preparation of the plan. Considerable work has been undertaken to date, both in Government Departments and State agencies and by the many other groups and organisations with an interest in this area.
In May 1992 I invited the seven sub-regional review committees, set up to review implementation of the Structural Funds, to make submissions containing their views on the content and strategy of the next plan, the Community support framework and operational programmes in so far as they would affect each subregion. These submissions have all been received. Each sub-regional review committee's submission takes into account a wide range of proposals from local authority, agriculture, trade union, community development and business sector interests at local and regional level.
The social partner organisations represented on the Central Review Committee — that is, ICTU, IBEC, IFA, ICMSA, ICOS and CIF — as well as the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland and the Council for the Status of Women were also invited to make submissions on the content and strategy of the plan.
A large number of other groups and individuals have made submissions to me, to the various Ministers with sectoral responsibilities relating to the plan, to the Department of Finance or to other relevant Departments. The different views outlined in these submissions and in the various seminars and conferences held nationally on the topic are an important input into the whole planning process. The various Government Departments have drawn up detailed proposals in relation to programmes and measures with which they deal.
Dialogue with the EC Commission provides another input. A further aspect of plan preparation, but far from the least important, is the potential of the plan to assist cross-Border co-operation and there have been discussions with the Northern Ireland authorities about this aspect.
When discussing the ESRI report it is appropriate to recognise the limitations there are in developing an objective scientific approach to this complex area. Generally, criteria for assessing the relative worth of projects can be established in a sector or programme area. The difficulties involved in doing so vary from sector to sector. It becomes much more difficult to assess the relative merits of projects across sectors — for example, to compare the return from a roads project with an industrial investment or a training scheme. Similarly, it can be difficult to assess the relative return from a certain level of investment in a variety of sectors. Furthermore, the determining of priorities for a development plan involves important policy considerations that can go beyond the purely quantifiable.
Ultimately, it will be a matter for the Government to decide on its priorities for the plan, taking account of all the inputs made — in this instance there were approximately 100 of the evaluations and quantifications carried out and all the other policy considerations arising. However, in making the difficult decisions involved, the consultancy study is one valuable input and I hope in making it publicly available that it will also be a useful input into public debate on the plan.
The Government envisages that the Dáil will have an opportunity to have a full discussion on the plan and this will allow for an exchange of views on all aspects including the consultants' recommendations.
I understand from the Whips that it has been agreed that the House will debate the plan on Thursday week. I hope to have the summary, which is a very long and detailed summary, circulated before or just after the weekend. I will do this as quickly as possible. This is just one of a huge number of documents that have been submitted to Government by different groups. However, we commissioned it. It was one of the documents we considered before finalising the national plan.
We are making progress at last.