Bertie Ahern, urging a meeting with Eurostat officials
It has been confirmed that Department of Finance officials are seeking an urgent meeting with the EU's statistics division, Eurostat. This follows the negative response by Eurostat to the government's application to split the country into two regions for the next share out of EU Structural Funds.
On the Taoiseach's instructions, Irish officials will urgently try to establish if the plan to split the country into rich and poor regions can be salvaged. The application sent to the EU's statistics division, and given a negative response on Monday, sought to create a less well off area of 15 counties.
One option for the government would involve seeking to persuade Eurostat to change its views and accept this proposal. An alternative strategy could include dropping Clare and Kerry for the proposed objective one region, plus offering to fine tune plans for new Irish regional government structures.
However, on Morning Ireland this morning, the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, defended the government's decision to include Kerry and Clare in its application for structural funds.
A number of MEPs, including Pat the Cope Gallagher and Joe McCartin, believe Eurostat and the European Commission would look favourably on this approach. As things stand, the entire regionalisation proposal is in jeopardy.
Unless a deal can be struck with Eurostat, the entire country will be considered an Objective One area in transition for the next share out of structural funds, with no counties entitled to the top level of aid. In that situation, the government would not be able to offer higher state aid packages to industries setting up in the less well off counties.
