Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

——and the regional disparities will not be eliminated overnight but I refer the Senator to the ESRI report which shows they are reducing. I have confirmed that the national spatial strategy and the alignment of national development funding in the next seven years will greatly accelerate that trend in the right direction. It is true that unless we effect regional development and ensure that is our top priority in the coming years, the imbalance in development we have seen could continue. We want to stop that. We devised the spatial strategy to overcome it but that is not to say we should not have had development in the first place. This country has come from a period of under-capitalisation historically but with the level of economic activity we have achieved we must ensure there is greater balance in that activity, not just in the west but in my part of the country as well. In terms of IDA approved jobs, the west has done much better than my region.