Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

CLÁR funds or co-funds, together with other Departments, State agencies and local authorities, invest in selected priority developments. These investments support physical, economic and social infrastructure across a wide range of measures and reflect the priorities identified by the communities in the selected areas, whom I consulted at the start of the programme.

Expenditure under the CLÁR programme amounted to €14.14 million in 2002, €8.613 million in 2003 and €12.116 million in 2004 which, it is estimated, leveraged out a further €36.5 million in related public and private expenditure in those three years. The estimate for 2005 is €13.7 million, an increase of more than 13% on the 2004 outturn. As a result, I expect that, once again, a comprehensive work programme will be completed in 2005 and I am satisfied that CLÁR is making a sustained and strong positive contribution to rural communities.

In general, no specific allocations are made to the CLÁR areas of counties from each year's Estimates provision for the programme. Some measures are demand led while in other cases the projects are, by and large, selected or recommended by the relevant Departments, State agencies, Leader groups and local authorities in consultation with my Department. However, under the non-national roads measure, allocations are made to each local authority based on the county's percentage of the total CLÁR population.

This approach ensures both efficiency and effectiveness in delivering the programme and meets the needs of the people in the CLÁR areas. I intend to continue these procedures for any new measures I may introduce, depending on the needs identified. Equally, I will keep under review the operation of existing measures. The CLÁR programme vividly demonstrates that relatively small amounts of public funding, specifically targeted, can have a profound and positive impact in disadvantaged rural areas.

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