Joe McHugh (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. A report has been presented today to the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business and it is an indictment of the level of investment in the past ten years. I will talk specifically about the interdepartmental report, launched in Donegal in July 2006, and the task force report commissioned by the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, when she was Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

A plan was supposed to have been put in place by the Government for Donegal but it has not materialised. Today's report on the Border, midlands and western region identifies negatives and gaps apparent to the public in Donegal for some considerable time. The region encompasses a number of counties but no county has suffered as much as County Donegal as a result of the lack of investment.

At the end of June 2005, the total spend was 50% of the original forecast. That followed a mid-term review in 2003 which found there had been a €400 million underspend in the BMW region on infrastructure and ancillary investment. There was a 36% underspend on agriculture and rural development, a 41% underspend on sea fisheries development and a 35% underspend on industry.

The BMW regional assembly commissioned a study whose results, to say the least, are alarming. An audit of innovation report was produced in 2004 which showed a disproportionately low number of new company start-ups in the BMW region; an overall low level of company performance and growth; a number of weaknesses in innovation; low levels of research and development, venture capital and entrepreneurial culture; weaknesses in the ICT and pharmaceutical sectors; an absence of links with third level institutions; and vulnerability due to lack of or poor infrastructure in air services, telecommunications, road and rail networks and energy.

The innovation report was presented in November 2005 to the Taoiseach, with suggestions for improvements and solutions for places such as Donegal and the greater BMW region. The audit was produced in 2004. This is 2007 and little or no progress has occurred. I was part of a team that commissioned the report, Creating a More Inclusive Labour Market, two years ago. We presented a series of key recommendations to assist the labour market in Donegal and regarding key areas of investment. These have not been realised either.

County Donegal has a vibrant entrepreneurial spirit despite the successive lack of investment by the Government. In the face of the constraints presented by peripherality and the lack of road and rail links, telecommunications and broadband infrastructure, we have managed to fight the fight. Rather than talk about the past, I call on the Minister to outline a map for progress in County Donegal. The Government must implement policy as it should be implemented. The underspend of €400 million in 2003 on the BMW region, including Donegal, can no longer be justified, especially given what will happen in Donegal in the future. The new institutions will be up and running as a result of the re-establishment of the Assembly and we must work closely with our counterparts in Northern Ireland, with Donegal County Council and with the people we represent.

There have been lame duck excuses for not investing in the west, such as that offered by the Department of Finance two years ago which stated that the reason for pumping investment into infrastructural projects in the east was to clear the bottlenecks. It is time Government representatives and Ministers realised that the solution to the problems in the east is to open up infrastructure in the west. If proper infrastructure and access can be provided in counties Clare, Donegal, Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim, IDA Ireland will start to source potential business for those regions. If we provide free access to the west of Ireland, we can provide a solution to the bottlenecks in the east.

We need a strategy that will work and that encompasses every aspect of infrastructure, from rail to broadband to port and airport solutions. We must have that strategy. An opportunity was missed in the past ten years. People in the north west and west will no longer accept the lame duck excuses for successive investment in the east of the country. The solution lies in opening up the west and north west. We do not need any more excuses for the lack of progress and for not following the policy that has been mapped out for almost 20 years.