Major development plan aims to rejuvenate area

A detailed investment programme for the Border, midlands and western counties, costed at £3.2 billion, is to be presented at a meeting of the Border Midlands and Western (BMW) Regional Assembly in Roscommon today.

The investment, the BMW Operational Programme, complements a further £10 billion to be invested in the region by central Government over the next 61/2 years as part of the National Development Plan.

The unprecedented level of investment is aimed at curtailing more than 150 years of disadvantage in the region and building on recent gains which have seen the region's population rise for the first time since the Famine.

Today's presentation will detail where the regional programme money will be spent, and will include projects such as the "restoration" of more than 12,000km of secondary or county roads, development of the sea and fishery ports, grant aid for regional airports and the extension of high-speed Internet access to every house in the region.

While the spending scheme being announced today is costed at just over £3 billion, it could run to significantly more as some of the money is provided as grant aid which will prompt significant private investment.

The programme to be put before the assembly will detail spending under four main headings.

These are: local infrastructure, for which £1,988 million has been provided; local enterprise development, for which £435 million has been provided; agricultural development, for which £503 million has been allocated; and social inclusion, for which £297 million has been provided.

At £848 million, the restoration programme for the roads is the largest single item in the programme.

It reflects the current bad state of county roads which are an acknowledged factor in the State's difficulty in reducing road deaths in line with the five-year strategy, The Road to Safety.

The development of high-grade dual carriageways to the northwest and motorways to the Co Louth-Co Down Border as well as Galway, and work on all national roads in the region is not included in the BMW programme, which is being administered instead by central Government. Public transport issues are also being handled by the Government.

Measures to improve the quality of rural water, including 300 group water schemes, are set to cost £354 million, while waste management measures will cost £292 million.

The grant figure available to aid the deployment of broadband infrastructure to facilitate an e-commerce environment is £278 million.

At £41 million the provision for urban and village renewal, covering 464 small towns and villages, looks small.

But as private properties are covered by separate national grant schemes, this money will be used to provide street furniture, painting of public property and general improvements.

Some £20 million has been set aside to aid seaports and £109 million for fisheries and Gaeltacht harbours.

The regional airports in the area, which include Carrickfinn in Co Donegal, Strandhill in Co Sligo, Galway Regional and Knock International, will have a fund of £9.4 million for passenger facilities and safety systems.

The programme provides £145 million to be spent on culture, recreation and sport, including the development of five regional sports centres, the locations of which will depend on the State's spatial development strategy, which is not due to be published until the end of 2001.

However, it is likely they will develop around existing facilities in the major urban centres.

Under this programme it is also proposed to develop 15 arts centres in the region, some new and some existing. Again precise locations will await the spatial development plan.

Under the local enterprise subprogramme, £14.4 million is to be made available for business innovation systems to be developed in association with institutes of technology in the region.

The detail of the figures has been worked out over the past year since the publication of the National Development Plan. The amount of the programme has risen by almost £500,000 since the transfer of responsibility for the agricultural development sector from central Government to the regional assembly.

The spending programme requires the approval of the BMW assembly, as the managing authority, but has already been "proofed" by an inter-departmental committee to ensure its compliance with Government policy on gender-balancing, antipoverty measures, environmental sustainability and rural development.

The BMW Operational Programme is one of eight which make up the National Development Plan 2000 to 2006.

The other programmes are: economic and social infrastructure; employment and human resources; the productive sector; the southern and eastern operational programme; the peace operational programme and a programme of technical assistance, as well as an overall National Development Plan/ community support framework operational programme.