Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Ring raised two questions. No doubt there are questions on the Order Paper for my Minister of State, Deputy Curran. However, 29 CDPs have received notice that the intention is not to continue with funding. They have been told why and they have an opportunity to appeal, which can be lodged any day up to 15 January next and which will be heard by an appeals board or group set up within the Department but which is separate from those who made the original decision. The view of those who assessed these CDPs is that they were not effective and, therefore, there was no point in continuing to fund them.

On the wider re-organisation, Deputy Ring has complained bitterly time and again about too many different bodies doing the same thing. What we are doing is streamlining it into one clear social inclusion programme. No doubt when the Deputy sees this work through, he will fully support it, as he has always supported rationalisation of that kind.

On the Gaeltacht and islands spend, it is true that there is a decrease in the funding but a large part of that decrease, approximately €12 million, relates to a decrease in island capital funding from the high level of €23 million. That is quite easily explained by the fact that the largest ever single infrastructure project on the Aran Islands will complete during next year. In addition, major infrastructure such as the airstrips on Inisbofin and in Cleggan are largely complete. There is some work outstanding, but the heavy infrastructure work is coming to completion. It was always planned that the funding would wind down once we had got over that peak of doing so many projects together.

There are still a number of projects that need to be done. We are still planning them. In particular, there is a pier upgrade needed on Inis Oirr, which will not be as expensive a job as those on the other two islands, and planning is going ahead. There is a pier in Rannach in Donegal for which planning is still going ahead. However, the kind of spend there has been in the past two years on the islands was never projected into the future and that is a large slice of the reduction in the Gaeltacht spend.

I would admit that the Gaeltacht spend is tight but, for example, there were recommendations that the Irish colleges were to close and I have funding for the Irish colleges next year. The main programmes will run even though there may be cutbacks here and there in the operational programmes.

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