The disparities between and within richer and poorer EU member-states must be eliminated if real territorial cohesion is to be achieved, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, told a major EU presidency conference in Galway yesterday.
Devising and putting in place the economic and social infrastructure required to support the right of people to a sufficient standard of living while remaining in their native environment was a key challenge that cohesion and rural development policies must address, the Minister said.
"As an island state on the western periphery of Europe, we fully understand the difficulties posed by problems of accessibility, infrastructural deficits, access to markets, rural to urban migration and the various other constraints that pertain to peripherality," he explained.
Minister Ó Cuív told the conference on Territorial Cohesion, "A New Partnership for Cohesion" at Furbo, organised by his Department with the Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission, that the debate on cohesion policy had reached an important juncture.
The conference would help to advance the development of future policy in the enlarged EU.
He said it was important to understand that they were still at the early stages in the decision-making process about what shape cohesion policy would take.
The Commission's proposals for EU structural and cohesion funding for the period 2007-2013 are contained in the Third Report on Economic and Social Cohesion.
He said this report showed how geographic or natural handicaps could intensify development problems, particularly in the case of islands, mountainous areas, sparsely populated areas and the outermost regions..
The development of such regions was further impeded by poor economic and social infrastructure, accessibility, travel and distance costs and inadequate and poor utilisation of communications networks, he explained.
The three day conference was attended by some 200 senior officials from member-states, the European Commission and other European institutions and associations.
Mr John Hume addressed the conference dinner yesterday evening and Mr Jean-Charles Leygues, Director, Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission, presented the key aspects of the third report.
