James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State also has responsibility for my area and has failed to deliver. He has failed to deliver and the truth hurts. A mere half of the budget for the BMW region, as outlined in the National Development Plan 2000-2006, has been spent. The money is no good to us in the pocket of the Minister for Finance and he should open the purse strings and let the money that is due to the BMW region be spent on the many valuable projects planned for the region. The BMW region, which has Objective One status, is meant to be a priority region and funding is meant to bring equality to the area and bring it up to par with the rest of the country.

The allocated funding is supposed to promote growth and development, and improve the road and rail infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, and rural development. The chambers of commerce, industrialists, farming organisations and many others with an interest in the development of the BMW region feel let down by the Government's lack of interest in this area. The widening gap between the midlands and the east is indicative of the mentality that keeps alive and well the thinking that nothing outside the Pale is worthy of consideration.

Falling victim to a Government which squanders wastefully on one fiasco after another and refuses to spend money on the important issues, is very much to the detriment of the midlands and the BMW region as a whole. If the infrastructural needs of Longford, Westmeath, Laois, Offaly and the other midlands and Border counties were to be redesignated under the broad heading of purchase and storage of obsolete electronic voting machines, I am sure this lame-duck Government would throw money at the BMW counties. As it is, the picture is somewhat different. The midlands is struggling in an infrastructural morass, as the financial input to the BMW region takes its place behind one hare-brained Government scheme after another and behind other regions of this affluent country.

The national spatial strategy is already as outdated and outmoded as the electronic voting machines and the approach to decentralisation shows a complete lack of co-ordination with the strategy. It is imperative for economic and social development to be more regionally balanced and any development plan must reflect this and must contain nationally inclusive goals of competitiveness, sustainability and social cohesion. Co-ordination of a better regional balance is imperative to achieving national goals and to the achievement of a better quality of life in all regions, with equality of distribution.

The National Development Plan 2000-2006 and national spatial strategy were intended to redress the regional imbalances and spread growth more evenly throughout the country. However, regional disparities are widening further. Between 2000 and 2005 employment supposedly increased by 24.1% in the midlands, which includes my constituency of Longford-Westmeath. Like most statistics, this figure paints an incomplete picture, as it fails to detail the location of the new jobs, which many economists believe refer to those held by people who commute to Dublin. Last December, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, speaking at the third sod turning ceremony in Longford, where the offices of the Prison Service are being relocated, denied that the Government's decentralisation policy is "an election stunt" aimed at securing seats in marginal constituencies. However, of the promised 180 personnel relocating to Longford, only 158 will move, although this could change as time moves on. For example, the figures are changing in the Minister of State's constituency.