Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. With regard to the reform of the regulation covering EU funds, specifically the EU cohesion policy which delivers investment in times of economic crisis, in recent weeks there has been much deliberation and compromises struck on the macroeconomic conditionality clause. The committee on regional development discussed it a number of weeks ago. The clause on macroeconomic conditionality could trigger the suspension of funds in the event of a macroeconomic imbalance or an excessive budget procedure. Some of the negotiators during one of the processes changed its name to measure linking effectiveness of European structural and investment funds to signed economic governance. The European Parliament has won some leeway on it and is now able to scrutinise the measures much more, such as with regard to ceilings on aid suspensions. The suspension of funds is supposed to be adjusted in line with social and economic circumstances in the member state concerned. How will this happen? How will it be monitored? The co-rapporteurs for the common provisions regulation stated they fought for compromise to make it impossible for this mechanism to ever be applied in practice. Is this true?

The youth guarantee was mentioned and I do not want to go into it in too much detail. With regard to the implementation plan to be submitted by the end of next month how will it be monitored by the Commission? How will it be monitored in terms of social indicators and what it is doing to address unemployment and getting young people into employment, education and training? The payment appropriations for the youth employment initiative have been front-loaded for 2014 and 2015. I read this means all the money allocated for the youth employment initiative will be spent in these two years. If we have not sufficiently addressed the youth unemployment crisis by the end of 2015 what support will be there afterwards?