EU says State must catch up on childcare and agricultural projects

The State has just two years to catch up on spending projects such as childcare, infrastructure and agriculture, the EU Director of Regional Policy, Ms Elisabeth Slavkoff, has warned.

Ms Slavkoff, who was meeting one of the agencies monitoring the implementation of the National Development Plan yesterday, said spending would have to be on target by the 2003 Plan Review.

Last week The Irish Times revealed that some Government departments were falling behind on spending their annual capital funding. Among them were the Department of Agriculture, where foot-and-mouth disease has played havoc with projections, spending on roads, other infrastructure and childcare.

Ms Slavkoff said in Ireland she would also meet representatives of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which was part funded by the EU.

The meeting follows criticism this year from the EU Court of Auditors, which said in a report to the European Parliament that there appeared to be a low takeup of funding and some crossover between the IFI and the EU Peace Programme funds.

While the IFI energetically rejected the criticism at the time, Ms Slavkoff said she would be meeting the fund committee to discuss the situation.

"We will be discussing a better exchange [of information] from projects. We try to avoid overlapping and would be hoping to see a database on all projects which have come for aid."

Ms Slavkoff said the cohesion fund was of particular benefit to Ireland. With its help in the last decade the State's GDP had moved from 68 per cent of the EU average to 110 per cent.

She approved of the Government's decision to split the State into two regions for funding.

However, she said there were still serious regional imbalances: "you have social development issues to face. Some people have benefited more than others and although the country is improving as a whole, progress is not progress unless it benefits all the people. There is regional imbalance and also you have a lot of urban disadvantage".

Yesterday's meeting was hosted by the monitoring committee of the Border, Midlands and Western Assembly. Ms Slavkoff was told the region had made better progress in some areas than others - agriculture was being held up, while spending on non-national roads was ahead of target.

Mr Gerry Finn, director of the BMW authority, said he was in no doubt that spending in areas where it had not met targets could be speeded up to meet the mid-term review in 2003.