Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Sobral. I send my personal regards to Commissioner Ferreira. I hoped she would be here. She and I were members of the environment Council during the 1990s, along with Michel Barnier and Angela Merkel. I do not know where I went wrong. They seem to have got on well since. I was the Minister responsible for cohesion funding in the run-up to the previous multi-annual financial framework. I want to make a political point first. We in Ireland were hugely appreciative of cohesion funding for the years we really needed it to be transformative. It is less important now. I made a number of visits in advance of the previous round to places such as Wales that got enormous transfers of resources to their benefit but subsequently voted for Brexit. I do not know whether we need to go back to better branding of the transformative nature of cohesion funding. It seems domestic governments claim European funding as their own when it is good and blame the European Union for anything they disagree with. In terms of the cohesion of Europe as opposed to the cohesion of Europe's economies, we need to have some view towards this.

I want to ask about the Brexit adjustment fund and this will probably come as no surprise. I represent the south-east of Ireland. My county of Wexford is a poor area in a rich region, relatively speaking. One of the issues that is very important to us now is developing the potential of direct connectivity with Europe, with the impact on the land bridge being clear. This has happened. There is a 400% increase in conductivity between the port of Rosslare and a variety of continental ports bypassing the UK land bridge. Mr. Sobral has told us €360 million has been transferred, or is about to be transferred in the coming days or this week. My understanding is that a significant portion of this will be for port development to make our ports Brexit ready. I am interested to hear Mr. Sobral's specific perspective on how the money is to be spent to make sure that it is spent, as we have heard from the Court of Auditors, in a way that is entirely consistent with the legal aims and objectives of the Brexit adjustment fund. Is it a matter of spending it first and clearing it afterwards? Is there a requirement for projects to be specifically cleared with the Commission in advance of spending? It will be a tight framework to spend the bones of €1 billion over the next three years if there is a protracted project validation system.

My next question is on the PEACE PLUS process. I was involved in negotiating the last round in the previous multi-annual framework. We are in public session so I will be guarded in what I say about this. I can say there was no great enthusiasm from the Westminster Government at the time for the programme. The agreement we came to is that it would not object to it but it would not advocate for it within the Commission in the previous funding round. I am a little bit concerned about how it will be sustained. I am heartened by Mr. Sobral saying that despite tensions elsewhere there is good co-operation with the UK authorities on the PEACE PLUS process. With regard to oversight, since it was overseen by the special EU programmes body here presumably it cannot be a special EU programme body if the UK is no longer part of the EU. How does Mr. Sobral see this developing?