Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 21 Oct 2003

Vol. 572 No. 6

Written Answers. - Western Development Commission.

Pat Rabbitte

Ceist:

137 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs if he will make a statement on the recently published annual report of the Western Development Commission; and if his attention has been drawn to the concerns expressed in the report regarding the reported ?644 million shortfall in national development plan spending in the BMW region. [24069/03]

Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (Éamon Ó Cuív)

I assume the Deputy is referring to the statement issued on 1 July last by the Western Development Commission, WDC. The WDC expressed concern at the underspend in the Border, midlands and west regional operational programme. It stressed that the allocated budget for the programme should be spent in the BMW region and called for expenditure to increase rapidly in the second half of the programme. The BMW Regional Assembly points out that the €644 million shortfall was based on expenditure to date relative to the original indicative forecasts set out in the regional operational programme in 2000.

It is important to set this figure in context to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding. I under stand that much of the underspent money relates to projects which have been approved and are in progress across various measures, but for which no funding had been paid out at the end of December 2002. There were a number of unavoidable delays in getting some measures up and running. These included the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 followed by severe weather conditions which restricted progress in the on-farm investment schemes and delays in State aid approvals affected tourism measures, waste management and some on-farm investment schemes. The broadband measure was hampered by the slowdown in the IT sector. It is still expected that these measures will spend their full allocation by 2006.

Several measures are performing well, for example, local authority expenditure on non-national roads is ahead of target. Other measures performing well are county enterprise boards, fisheries harbours infrastructure, Teagasc advisory services and the local development programmes. Expenditure on national roads, however, is well behind target. I have expressed my concern to my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, in that regard. I will keep the issue under review during the remaining period of the NDP.

Question No. 138 answered with Question No. 97.

Question No. 139 answered with Question No. 112.