Joe O'Reilly (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also thank the Minister of State for a comprehensive and thorough report. I am especially heartened by the paragraph where he notes President Juncker's plans for an ambitious jobs growth and investment package for Europe, in which he identifies €300 billion to be spent. I hope this country will benefit from that and that it will help us bring our unemployment levels down to single digits in percentage terms. I presume the Minister of State will be in there batting with other Cabinet colleagues to ensure we come out of that well. His reaction on that would be welcome.
The Minister of State graciously complimented our report on the Europe 2020 strategy and he will know that a central aspect of our report was the need for a territorial dimension to the distribution of European funding and support funding and, indeed, in economic development in all spheres, including in the €300 billion cited earlier. While the Border, midlands and west region represented by me and Senator Kathryn Reilly is making progress, and its well-documented progress over the years indicates the importance of European input, it is still in a very unequal position vis-à-visthe rest of the country by all criteria. That has its roots in the conflict in Northern Ireland and a number of issues, including the difficulty of attracting inward investment. That area suffers relative to other areas. It has improved but it suffers. We are concerned that there would be continued input into that area.
The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, committed in his budget speech to ensuring that the benefits of Ireland's economic revival are shared throughout the country. Ireland secured €1.2 billion of Structural Funds, which included a special allocation of €100 million for the Border, midlands and west region. With Government input, that should cause a €2 billion spend, but I would like the Minister of State to comment first on his commitment and what he sees himself as fit to achieve on the territorial dimension in terms of bringing up the weaker regions, giving them an input into how money is spent and implementing positive discrimination in their favour. That €100 million extra is very welcome and hopefully will be used well and have a multiplier effect, but the area needs further positive intervention. In the context of President Juncker's overall plans, that area has a difficulty attracting inward investment because of infrastructural deficits as well as everything else. While I would like to see all regions brought up, and we are well aware of difficulties in the south east as well, my priority is the area I represent, the Border, midlands and west region. I would like to hear a firm commitment from the Minister of State to the territorial dimension. As a corollary of that, I would like a firm commitment to areas like mine that are suffering relative to other areas in the country and a commitment to a local dimension in the spending of moneys there. The extra €100 million is welcome, but we will need more.
I am also interested in the Minister of State's comments on how to get the €300 billion spend, in public and private money, by President Juncker's initiative into the economy to generate jobs and so on. It is very welcome and something we have discussed on many levels. Could the Minister of State comment on how he sees Ireland benefiting from that and how he perceives a regional spread there?
We have wonderful economic progress in the country, thank God, but we do not have a proper dispersal of that.