ADDRESS BY MARY HARNEY, TÁNAISTE AND MINISTER FOR ENTERPRISE, TRADE AND EMPLOYMENT AT THE OPENING OF THE LIMERICK COUNTY AND CITY STRATEGY GROUP WORKSHOP IN FRIARS GATE THEATRE, KILMALLOCK, CO. LIMERICK MONDAY, 13TH JULY 1998

I am very pleased to be here in Kilmallock today for the official opening of the Workshop of the Limerick County and City Strategy Group.

The Government aims to maximise the potential of the regions for industrial development, employment generation and wealth creation.

That was a clear commitment in the Government's Action Programme for the Millennium and is being delivered on up and down the country. We have announced over 22,000 new jobs since coming into office just a year ago, an unprecedented rate. Over 75% of these jobs are destined for regions outside Dublin. That is what I mean by delivering on our Government Programme commitment.

For far too long Dublin and the East has been the focus of too much development. While this has led to increased prosperity, it has also resulted in significant problems in terms of housing shortages, pressure on skills availability, traffic congestion and so on.

The challenge is to have more development outside this eastern sector but to have it on a sustainable basis.

I note the theme of the Workshop is entitled "Fostering Sustainable Economic and Social Development." These are very worthy objectives and ones to which the Government fully subscribes.

It is my belief that social and economic development are interdependent and the improvement of the social fabric of a society, both rural and urban, is very dependent on improvements in the economic sphere. The converse of this is unfortunately equally true. Where there is economic deterioration in an area, with consequent unemployment, social deterioration tends to follow and we find this manifested very often in the migration of our people from rural areas to towns and cities and, ultimately further afield.

Initiatives such as the Limerick City and County Strategy Group are an important complement to Government action on regional development. Local and regional co-ordination and co-operation are a vital component of sustainable development, especially to maximise value for money, to avoid duplication of effort and to identify policy gaps that need to be filled.

An issue that needs to be considered by strategy groups such as yours is the funding environment post 1999. We must now envisage a situation in the early years of the new millennium when the amount of EU funding for local development programmes is gradually reduced. This situation will equally apply for national level programmes.

At Government level we are examining the potential for Public/Private Partnerships to deliver major infrastructure requirements in the post 1999 environment.

At local level innovative ways of funding local/regional need should be examined. I believe that the is the scope to tap into private sources of funding if sustainable projects are identified. The challenge is for groups such as yours to identify the openings. In this way we can build dynamic enterprises at local and regional level.