Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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We will come back to that. I will follow on from what Deputy Canney said about investment and the fact that the western region is in transition. Ireland was allocated €396 million of EU funding for European Regional Development Fund, ERDF, programmes that the Minister mentioned. When national co-financing is included, it allows the spending of €850 million. The north-west region is classified as disadvantaged. I am trying to get my head around this. The west is a region in transition and other regions are not as disadvantaged. Why was a higher proportion of the allocation not made to the regions if one of the overall objectives is to address the regional inequality? The obvious benefit of the lower classification is that the EU provides a larger share of the funding. It would provide 60% of all projects in the west. However, it seems that less than half of the Exchequer funding has been allocated to the two regions. Are there limitations there in what can be done?