Pat Rabbitte
Ceist:79 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Finance if he will make a statement on the progress to date in implementing the national development plan. [4683/01]
Written Answers. - National Development Plan.
Full information on progress made in the year 2000 on the operational programmes in the National Development Plan 2000-2006 will not be available until the meetings of the monitoring committees for these programmes, which are due to be held within the next two months. However, on the basis of the information to hand, I can inform the Deputy that progress in implementing the NDP last year was satisfactory, especially in the key area of infrastructure provision. In this regard, expenditure under the economic and social infrastructure operational programme was over £2 billion, or 95% of target, with good progress recorded in all areas.
In particular, there has been major work on the key inter-urban National Roads identified in the NDP, and new stretches of these roads, and of other roads in the network, will be opened this year. Moreover, progress in 2000 in planning and design will also enable further construction work to be advanced on all key routes in the current and future years. In environmental services, work is continuing nationwide on the construction of almost 80 major water and sewage schemes, and an additional 244 schemes will commence construction over the NDP period, 113 before end 2002. In public transport, the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines are on target to be operational by 2003. Moreover, last year, a significant number of new buses was added to Dublin and regional services and the capacity of Dublin suburban rail services was increased. Further new buses and suburban rolling stock will be introduced this year. In housing, health and education, physical output with a wide regional spread was generally on line with that projected in the NDP.
Because of the many measures being implemented under the operational programme for employment and human resources development, a complete picture for 2000 as a whole is not yet available. However, it is expected that the actual outturn expenditure will be somewhat below that profiled in the NDP. This is not unusual during the first year of a programme, when expenditure arising from commitments under the previous plan was still being incurred.
For partly the same reason, expenditure under the productive sector operational programme in 2000 is also expected to be below target. A further contributing factor were the delays encountered in receiving state aid approval from the European Commission for a number of schemes. However, I am pleased to note that more than 23,000 new jobs were created in IDA supported companies in 2000, which is an all time record. In addition, 50% of all jobs negotiated by the IDA during 2000 in greenfield investment projects were secured for the BMW region, in line with the commitment in the NDP.
In regard to the two regional operational programmes, there was excellent progress in non-national roads and rural water supply. In the important area of E-Commerce, the recent allocation by the Minister for Public Enterprise of some £60 million of NDP investment will induce gross investment of almost £200 million countrywide. Moreover, the commitment in 2000 of the first tranche of projects under the NDP childcare provision will create over 7000 additional child-care places throughout the country. By contrast, there was no expenditure on waste management because of delays in the adoption and implementation of waste management plans at regional or county level. Other measures on which no expenditure was incurred include urban and village renewal, seaports and airports, mainly because of delays in issuing calls for proposals. In sum, looking at the overall picture so far, I am happy with the progress of the NDP during its first year of operation and I am confident that the momentum built up last year will be sustained this year, and over the duration of the NDP.
Question No. 80 answered with Question No. 69.
Question No. 81 answered with Question No. 67.