Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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213. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will include the Adare Bypass, County Limerick on the Government's list for European Investment Bank funding. [47943/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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In September the Ecofin Council requested that a Task Force be established to develop an EU investment project pipeline. The Task Force was chaired jointly by the EIB and the European Commission and included a nominee from each Member State. The Task Force requested each Member State to submit a list of projects in accordance with its terms of reference.

Ireland's EIB Task Force's project list has been the result of coordination between my Department, the Department of Public Expenditure and the Departments with responsibility for the investment sectors specified in the Task Force's Terms of Reference. We have relied on Department's and agencies with direct policy responsibility as the source of all the projects that have been included in Ireland's input to the EU wide project list. 

The Irish project list is part of an EU wide request from the Task Force to gauge the level of available projects in the period 2015-2017 should investment resources be found. The project list is only a cross section of available projects that could commence between 2015 and 2017. The list does not involve prioritisation and does not bestow any special status on the projects themselves. It is still a matter for the Department's concerned to advance these projects or other projects such as the one you have mentioned in accordance with the Capital programme and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.  As of now, there is no extra funding available beyond the allocations agreed at Budget time and published in the Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2015-2017. It is also important to acknowledge that the current rules of the Stability and Growth Pact mean that even if additional resources were to become available whether they could be used for additional expenditure would depend on the impact of that expenditure on our expenditure limits and the GGB, while how they could be used would depend on competing expenditure priorities.