Written Answers Nos. 126-133
126. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform when the Office of Public Works will make a decision on an application from Leitrim County Council for €300,000 in respect of flood relief work at Loughrane, Feenagh, County Leitrim; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30860/13]
View answerMy Office is currently assessing the application submitted by Leitrim County Council under the Minor Works Scheme for flood relief works at Lough Reane. The application is being assessed under the Scheme’s eligibility criteria, which include a requirement that any measures are cost beneficial, and have regard to the overall availability of funding. A decision will be made on this application in the near future.
127. Deputy Regina Doherty asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in whose ownership is the Tower on the Hill of Skyrne, County Meath; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30914/13]
View answerSkreen Church tower situated on the Hill of Skryne Co. Meath is a National Monument in State ownership. It stands on an elevated site on the Hill of Skyrne and was built in 1341 on top of an earlier church which had a shrine dedicated to St. Columba.
128. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he will ensure that the various complaints that have been made by residents in the Rochfortbridge area, County Westmeath, to the Office of Public Works are dealt with (details supplied). [30962/13]
View answerI understand that the watercourse in question is one of the channels in the Rochfortbridge area that form part of the Boyne Arterial Drainage Scheme. The Office of Public Works (OPW) maintains these channels on a 3-4 year cycle and this channel was included in the maintenance programme last year. This work will have helped to reduce any potential flooding situation. Under its maintenance programme however, the OPW does not modify existing schemes but maintains them to the original scheme design standard. In this regard lowering the level of the channel would not be undertaken by the OPW as part of its normal maintenance works.
I am advised that the land in this particular area is prone to waterlogging and can become saturated after heavy or prolonged rainfall. This can, in turn, result in the watercourse overflowing its banks. The OPW will continue to monitor the situation at this location to see what, if any, further measures are warranted under our maintenance obligations.
129. Deputy Sean Fleming asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the provisions in the licensing application conditions for the national lottery regarding funding for good causes and the percentage that will apply for good causes on an ongoing basis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30985/13]
View answerUnder the next National Lottery licence, annual contributions for Good Causes will be set at 65% of Gross Gaming Revenues. Gross Gaming Revenues are defined as the level of sales less the amount deducted for prizes.
As the Deputy is aware, the successful bidder for the next licence will also be required to make an upfront payment to the State in return for a 20 year licence to operate the National Lottery.
130. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the expected benefits to accrue from the trade agreement between Europe and the US; the potential for this country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31117/13]
View answer131. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which he expects particular sectors here to be in a position to positively avail of the trade agreement between Europe and the US; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31118/13]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 130 and 131 together.
Following agreement at the Trade Council that I chaired on 14 June, the Commission now has a mandate to open negotiations with the U.S. on an historic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The formal negotiations between the EU and the US are due to begin on 8 July 2013. While it is far too early to anticipate the eventual negotiated outcome of the Agreement, the scope of the Council's negotiating directives to the EU Commission is sufficiently wide to maximise the potential benefits of an Agreement for the EU and its Member States.
According to assessments made by the EU Commission and other European bodies, a comprehensive Trade and Investment Partnership could over time boost EU GDP by 0.5% per annum and help create approximately 400,000 jobs in the EU. This would be equivalent to at least €86 billion of added annual income for the EU economy. Given the current very low level of economic growth in the EU and in Ireland, this will be a significant injection of economic activity and consequently of jobs. Based on those assessments, if Ireland simply benefited in proportion to the size of our economy within the EU, a comprehensive trade and investment partnership could over time provide gains to Ireland in the order of €800 million per annum in increased GDP, and 4000 new jobs.
An independent study by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), entitled 'Reducing Barriers to Transatlantic Trade', suggests the EU's economy could benefit by €119 billion a year, up to 80% of which would come from cutting unnecessary costs imposed on business by having to comply with two separate sets of rules, and from liberalising trade in services and creating new access for exporters into the huge public procurement market in the U.S.
While it is not possible to estimate in detail the impact on Ireland until there is greater clarity about any exchange of offers, the scale of the possible long term gains will have a positive impact on Ireland given our close trading and investment relationship with the U.S. In addition, many Irish exporters are part of European supply chains where their exports to the UK, Germany or elsewhere to the EU, feed into Europe’s exports to the U.S.
While tariffs are already low on trade across the Atlantic, the objective of abolishing even these will bring benefits to business in the short term. Tariffs that average about 3% on EU/U.S. trade may appear insignificant but even at this low level they constitute an unnecessary tax on trade with the U.S. by both foreign and indigenous companies.
The major benefits of course will arise from reform of regulatory restrictions applied by both economies. Many of these, such as the cost of having to meet two sets of technical specifications for consumer and other products, add extensive costs to exporters. In the longer term, if the TTIP brings about a regime whereby exporters would only need to meet one set of product compliance rules, it would save significant costs for exporters of medical devices, pharmaceuticals and chemicals among others.
In addition our agri-business sector would receive a boost if rules are changed that currently hold back our food exporters from being able to freely sell into the U.S. market, in the same way as they can into the EU.
132. Deputy John Deasy asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if his attention has been drawn to EUROSTAT data showing that citizens of other EU states living here had a higher employment rate than Irish nationals in 2012; and the reason that this is the case. [31152/13]
View answerHigher employment rates among migrants when compared to the native populations in their destination countries is a common and observable feature internationally. This may be explained by several factors:
Firstly, movers from the EU-12 (i.e. all recently accessed countries including EU-10 and EU-2) tend to be on average younger than the overall population in their destination countries, this will impact on relativities with native populations which will have a larger proportion of people outside of the working age.
Often migrants enter a country without family members for both practical reasons and due to the typical age profile of migrants which are often relatively young and may not yet have started a family. This can affect statistics in that migrants may not have the same level of non-working adult dependants as native populations.
Furthermore, mobile workers invariably have fewer ties to their receiving country. They have a predisposition to exit the country during periods of economic downturn, reflecting the fact that the main reason for their move abroad was to find work.
In sixteen EU Member States, working age citizens of other EU countries had a higher rate of employment than the rate for nationals of their receiving country. Rates were highest in Slovenia (80.2), Latvia (76.6), the Netherlands (76.1), the United Kingdom (75.9) and Poland (75.8). The gap between the average employment rate of working age citizens of other EU countries and the local population is highest in Italy, the UK, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg. It should be noted that using the EU LFS to estimate the number and characteristics of resident foreigners, and in particular "EU foreigners", can suffer limitations. Among these limitations, in the case of Slovenia, Latvia and Poland, are the small sample size which affects the reliability of data broken down by citizenship.
In recent years the annual EU Labour Force Surveys have shown that working age citizens from the EU-10 (the group of ten countries that joined the European Union in 2004) and the EU-2 (Bulgaria and Romania acceded in 2007) had a higher rate of employment on average when they moved abroad than the residents in the receiving EU-15 countries (by a difference of +9 percentage points in 2010). Since 85% of the EU-10 as well as the EU-2 nationals living in other Member States are of working age (i.e. aged 15-64) compared to 67% of the total resident population, intra-EU movers from the EU-10 and EU-2 countries are more likely to be in the economically productive period of their lives than the native population in the receiving countries.
133. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will confirm that there will be no further cuts to the back to education allowance scheme in budget 2014; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31150/13]
View answerThe objective of the Department’s working age employment supports, including the back to education allowance, is to remove barriers to employment in order to help people to enter or remain in employment. This is an integral part of the implementation of the Pathways to Work policy and the activation of jobseekers.
In 2013, €1,056 million is being provided for this programme, an increase of €102 million or 10.7 %. As well as back to education allowance this programme provides other supports for jobseekers through payments such as community employment, rural social scheme, Tús, back to work allowance, JobBridge and a range of other schemes.
The Deputy will be aware that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's Expenditure Report 2013 published with the Budget last December provides for additional new expenditure reduction measures of €440 million to be achieved in 2014 in the Department of Social Protection budget. The Government have not made any decisions to date in relation to expenditure measures to be introduced in 2014.
