Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 56: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance the action, in chronological order, he, his Department or the North-South Ministerial Council have taken for North-South co-operation in relation to relevant EU programmes, that is, INTERREG; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5762/08]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Territorial Cooperation Objective is the successor to the INTERREG Programme in the 2007-2013 round — it is informally known as the INTERREG IVA Programme. As well as those areas of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of the Republic of Ireland (Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth) that are eligible under the current INTERREG IIIA Ireland/Northern Ireland Programme, parts of the west coast of Scotland will now also be eligible in the new round of funding. This is because part of the Irish coast is less than 150km from the western Scottish coast. The Managing Authority for the Programme is the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).

In total, the European Union has provided €192m (in current prices) towards the Territorial Cooperation programme in the 2007-2013 period. Member States will supplement this with an additional €64m Exchequer funding bringing the total programme budget to €256m.

The Interreg IVA Programme was formally submitted to the European Commission for approval in June 2007. It was formally approved by the European Commission in November 2007. The NSMC Sectoral Meeting of 7 November 2007 welcomed the adoption of the EU North-South Programmes. The Operational Programme is open for applications and Steering Committees are now actively considering project proposals screened by the Joint Technical Secretariat.