I am aware that difficulties arose during the month of October regarding the Shannon Regional Board's banking arrangements.
Day to day financial transactions are a matter for each regional board whose responsibility it is to manage their finances in a prudent fashion to ensure that they live within the resources available to them.
I do not accept that the difficulties experienced by the board arose in any way from the actions of my Department. In particular, I reject the suggestion that the difficulties stemmed from a failure by my Department to issue a letter of comfort. The letter required in this case would have involved an indication by my Department that the board would be provided with funds additional to those already budgeted for. No such funds were available to my Department at that time and this was made quite clear to the board.
I would add that it is not general policy, in any event, to issue letters of comfort and the consent of the Department of Finance is required to the issue of such letters which would normally only be given in exceptional circumstances.
As the Deputy will be aware, however, I announced in mid-November that I was making available an additional £250,000 to the central and regional boards to cover safety expenditure costs arising from the Ballycotton inquiry report. The Shannon Board received £35,000 of this allocation. I expect that the Shannon Board will avail of this funding and make whatever other arrangements are necessary to manage their finances so that there is no repetition of the difficulties which arose in October.
