Vol. 481 No. 1
36 Mr. Boylan asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food whether he has secured adequate funds from the mid-term review of EU Structural Funds or from elsewhere to restore the control of farmyard pollution scheme in a significant way in view of his Government's unequivocal commitment to restore this scheme; and when he will accept a substantial number of new as well as existing applications. [15439/97]
The position following the mid-term review of the Structural Funds is that an extra £20 million in total public funds has been allocated to the scheme for the control of farm pollution. The net result is that overall funding of over £226 million is available for on-farm investment over the 1994-99 period. The extra funds which we have now obtained will allow us continue to process the remaining applications on hands and pay the farmers as soon as work has been satisfactorily completed.
They do not, however, provide sufficient funding to allow the scheme to be reopened to new applicants. I am still considering the matter and will also be closely monitoring the progress of other large-scale projects in the CSF as a whole in early 1998 to see if savings are likely to be identified in any areas which could be diverted to the scheme for the control of farm pollution.
I might add that I had hoped to secure more funds at the mid-term review but considering that there were demands for substantially increased funding from all of the nine operational programmes and that few of these could be met, I accept that the funding we secured was a reasonable amount. Furthermore, extra funds for any one operational programme had to be transferred from some other programme as no extra overall funds were available to Ireland.
