Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do. Let us begin.

I will start with the CLÁR programme, about which I have some questions. When it was constructed initially, it was fundamentally a leverage scheme. In other words, I had about €20 million available and the idea was to leverage another €20 million to €30 million from other authorities in order that there would a drawing of money into rural areas from the main State agencies which should have been doing things there. For example, we used to provide money for health centres. We provided 50% of the money. That meant that if, for example, it was decided to construct a health centre in Banada, a health centre that might have been at the bottom of the list suddenly came to the top because it became very cheap to provide it. However, it brought double the amount of money into Banada that the Department was giving. It appears from all of the CLÁR schemes which have been rolled out so far under this regime that it is no longer a leverage scheme but a straight funding scheme. Will the Minister of State confirm this or will he go back to leveraging, whereby those who do not wish to come to the party can stay away from it and get nothing?