Poverty blackspots in inner cities and other separate areas would be excluded from top-level EU structural funds if regionalisation of the State goes ahead, an Oireachtas Committee was told yesterday.
Mr Noel O'Gorman, from the Department of Finance, told a Joint Committee on the Family that regionalisation would mean that one area covering the west, midlands and Border would qualify for the highest level of structural funds while the rest of the State would receive gradually diminishing funds until 2006.
Until now Ireland had been regarded as one single region but because of its financial progress would no longer be regarded as having Objective 1 status and qualify for top-level funding.
However, Mr O'Gorman said that any new regions must be in line with the EU criteria on population and size and must be a contiguous region. Therefore, separate blackspots of deprivation would not be included.
"The consequences would be that the Objective 1 area would not be concentrated on the poorest regions but be over a huge area," he said.
A full Objective 1 region had to be below 75 per cent of GDP. He said boundaries could not be broken. It had to be an entire area.
Mr O'Gorman insisted regionalisation would not mean that other regions would be treated less favourably. "The Department's assessment is that if we adopt an overall prudent economic policy, we should generate sufficient resources to allow it to cover the diminishing EU aid," he said.
Mr Proinsias De Rossa TD (DL) said they were not there to debate GDP and listen to "flimflam" but how best structural funds could be applied to the people who needed them. Small funds in EU terms were not small in areas like Ballymun, Finglas, Darndale, and in Cork or Limerick.
As for the Government making up the difference in the diminishing funds, this always carried the caveat "resources permitting". Mr O'Gorman said the Government would have to decide overall what was in the national interest but the Department's assessment was that there was no downside to regionalisation in net terms.
Mr Paul McGrath TD (FG) said a region did not need to be contiguous. In the UK, Cornwall, parts of Wales, Merseyside, and the Scottish islands had been regionalised for higher funding.