Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ireland was allocated €396 million in the EU funding for the ERDF programme. When the national co-financing is included, it allows spending and investment of more than €850 million across the State. The northern and western region is classified as disadvantaged compared with the southern region or eastern and midlands region. The north west is the only region of the State not to be classified as more developed. This reflects the regional inequality in the State. The fund is supposed to address those inequalities. I hear what the Minister of State is saying but the benefit of the lower classification is that the EU provides a larger share of funding. That is 60% of funding for any of those projects. Instead of the Government seeing this as an opportunity, it appears that the northern and western region has received less than half of the Exchequer funding allocated to the two other regions. The problem is that it is being driven by population, which really is not going to address what we need to address.

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