Mr. Pat Colgan:

I welcome Deputy Ó Snodaigh's remarks on the intervention rate, which brings considerable flexibility to the process. He is also correct to place the funding in perspective. Effectively, the sum of €230 million will be allocated over ten years rather than seven years because there will be a three-year window to complete the spending at the end of the seven year period.

We are actually planning from 2014 to 2023. It spreads it out considerably more.

There is still no decision on the allocation for the INTERREG programme. That will be decided between the British Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government in terms of the allocation of their European territorial co-operation funding that they receive from Brussels. However, we anticipate the programme will be similar in size to the current programme, which is worth €256 million. We do not know the details of that yet, but that is what we anticipate. The two programmes together are worth €400 million to €450 million. That gives a better sense of scale. It is much more important to have complementarity between the two sister programmes in that regard. However, on an annual basis it is not a considerable amount, which is why in our discussions with the stakeholders in terms of programme preparation we say it is very important for these programmes to have a very clear, targeted focus and are not spread too wide thereby having less impact. We are trying to prioritise specific areas of intervention where we believe the programmes can make a difference and leave something iconic and significant that is a specific additional contribution from the programmes.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh asked about the rollover of money and the reallocations of money. Money allocated within a programme period - the current programme period is 2007 to 2014 - must be spent within that programme period and cannot be carried forward into another programme period. Those are the regulations. In the current programme period we have until the end of 2015 to spend all of our allocation even though the programme comes to an end at this time. The new programme period technically begins at the beginning of 2014, will run until 2020 and there are three years after that to spend it out. So as I said it is from 2014 to 2023 but there is no carryover from one period to another. If it is not spent-----