EU has to beg Government to seek funds for the west

The EU has had to take the unprecedented step of writing to the Irish Government – to cajole them into applying for millions of euro in development funds they have so far failed to seek for the west.

A sub-committee of the European Parliament believes that the west has not received a fair slice of previous applications for funding from the European Regional Development Fund – because the Government didn’t ask for it.

In a letter seen by the Connacht Tribune, the EU Committee on Petitions has informed Transport Minister Leo Varadkar that the West and North West have not benefited from available funding for major infrastructural projects and regional development as a whole.

Crucially, the letter, signed by committee chairman Erminia Mazzoni, also reveals that there is money available for the construction of the Western Rail Corridor . . . if the Department of Transport would just apply for it. The committee has even offered to travel here on a fact-finding mission to help identify projects for consideration.

But the reality is that, when applying for funding, civil servants attached to successive governments have largely ignored the West – and this has apparently been allowed to go unnoticed for years.

So much so, that the committee in Europe felt obliged to write to the Minister asking him to apply for funds that are available to complete projects like the Western Rail Corridor and the Atlantic Corridor from Limerick to Sligo.

This committee is concerned with balanced regional development and has now inquired as to why funding for the west has not been sought.

It is unprecedented that a EU committee should ‘brow-beat’ an Irish government department into applying for funding available for major infrastructural projects.

In fact, such is the lack of applications for funding from the west that members of the committee are to embark on a visit to Ireland later this year on a fact finding mission.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.