Vol. 455 No. 1
144 Mr. O'Dea asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the amount of EU funding which will be available for the Food Research Centre under the National Development Plan; the date of the commencement of the work under this programme; the numbers of people to be employed; and the date of commencement of employment of the extra staff expected. [11685/95]
I assume the question relates to the Teagasc food centres. A sum of £41.044 million was provided for institutional food research in the National Plan under Measure 3 in the food sub-programme of the Operational Programme for Industrial Development. These funds are being allocated by my Department on the basis of recommendations made by the NonCommissioned Food Research Committee. This committee has appropriate industry and institutional representation.
The research institutions submit research proposals for funding which are examined by the committee. Over £6 million has been approved to date of which over £4 million is in respect of projects submitted by the Teagasc food centres. The first of these projects commenced early in 1994.
I have no specific information regarding the number of people employed since most of those involved were already employed by Teagasc and are assigned to a number of projects at any one time. The question of Teagasc staffing for food research has been under consideration for some time and a number of posts have already been sanctioned. Sanction for further posts has to be considered in the context of the recent Government decision on recruitment in the public service.
