The Deputy will be aware that investments under the national development plan are delivered through a number of operational programmes which are directly managed and implemented by Departments, the regional assemblies or other agencies. The responsibility of my Department is to ensure that resources are made available to meet the Government's objectives and to secure full draw-down of Ireland's allocation of Structural Funds.
All Departments have been asked to ensure that the investment objectives for the BMW region are prioritised. It is my objective that as major projects are completed more funds will become available over the remainder of the NDP for investment in the BMW region so that progress can be made on rectifying the existing imbalance.
Overall progress on delivering the NDP has been improving with some €36.2 billion of expenditure incurred nationally at the end of December 2004. This compares with €28 billion of expenditure at the end of December 2003. With respect to expenditure in the BMW region, total expenditure reported to the operational programme monitoring committees at their April meetings amounted to some €12.3 billion or nearly 78% of profiled expenditure for the period January 2000 to December 2004. In 2004 just over €1 billion was spend on the key economic and social infrastructure programme in the BMW region. This represented 96% of projected expenditure for the year 2004.
Total expenditure achieved nearly 90% of projected levels for the period January 2000 to December 2004. In the national roads programme €168 million more was spent in the BMW region in 2004 than in 2003. This attests to the continued significant improvement in investment in the region. In the housing programme, expenditure in the BMW region from January 2000 to December 2004 reached 120% of projected expenditure for the period. Expenditure on the health programme over the same period amounted to 99% of forecast.