Vol. 475 No. 4
283 Mr. O'Malley asked the Minister for the Marine the reason a grant for a proposed £5 million marine development project at Moneypoint, County Clare on the Shannon Estuary has been withdrawn and the funding for this project then allocated to roads as recently announced at a meeting of the Limerick Harbour Commissioners. [5058/97]
There has been no decision at any level to withdraw funding from this project.
Due to the scale of the project an external evaluation of the proposal is required as set out in the Operational Programme for Transport 1994-99 (OPT). This evaluation has recently been completed and is being examined by the Department prior to submission to the OPT Monitoring Committee.
The mid term evaluation of the OPT is under way at present. Recommendations on the future allocation of funding will be made only by the monitoring committee following meetings to be held in March and April and, finally, in the context of the mid term review of the Community Support Framework (CSF) in June 1997. No moneys have been transferred from the seaports measure to the roads measure in the OPT.
My Department is committed to ensuring that the full allocation for seaports under the OPT will be fully utilised by the end of 1999.
