Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The answer is that when I negotiated the partnership agreement, we had a finite amount of resources, €350 million, of which €79 million was for the farm improvement scheme. The agreement provided that this was the amount to be spent until the money ran out. Moving on from the agreement there was to be a review in 2008 on the basis of ascertaining how these programmes were manifesting. If we needed to reprioritise we would do this within the budget as set down under the national development plan.

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