EU committee to see for themselves if West being short-changed

Almost six weeks after The Connacht Tribune revealed that the Government had to be asked by a committee in the European Parliament to apply for funding for the West of Ireland, it has now responded by claiming that it has applied for all available funds.

But this is in direct contradiction to a clear statement from the EU Committee on Petitions, saying that funding for projects in the West had not been applied for and were asking why not.

So much so that members of this European Parliament committee are now planning to visit this country before the end of the year to determine why funding for projects in the West has not been applied for.

A letter, seen by The Connacht Tribune, and sent from Europe to Transport Minister Leo Varadkar, stated that the West had not benefited from available funding for major infrastructural projects simply because there had been no applications from the Government.

Almost a month and a half after the Tribune published this revelation, Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon has responded by saying that Minister Varadkar informed him that there were no unclaimed funds or under-claimed funds from Europe.

He has insisted that available funding for projects like the Western Rail Corridor had been tapped into and everything available under the European Regional Development Fund had been claimed.

But in correspondence from Europe to the Department of Transport, the situation is portrayed as completely different: that the West of Ireland had not been included in any significant applications for funding from the European Regional Development Fund.

And it is the lack of applications from the West of Ireland that has prompted members of the committee to embark on their visit to Ireland later this year.