Members of the European Parliament Committee of the Regions, and the EU Commission, were in Dublin yesterday to hear the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, outline how the State intends to oversee regional development spending over the next seven years.

Addressing a conference on regional development in Dublin, the Minister said the National Development Plan 2000 to 2006 (NDP), for which current estimates are running at £35 billion (€44.4 billion), will feature a number of elements in the area of economic and social infrastructure, human resources and the productive economy.

The regions - the Border, Midlands, and the Western, Southern and Eastern regions - will oversee spending in two new operational programmes, the Minister revealed.

These operational programmes will be run by a committee of all the relevant agencies, with the regional assemblies providing personnel to chair the committees. In addition, the Government intends to run a number of inter-regional programmes to "to reduce the disparities between the two regions".

The Minister also said the Department of the Environment had been asked to come up with a spatial development strategy, to spread the benefits of the economy to the regions.

However, in what was seen as a significant statement and one which brought criticism from other speakers, the Minister said that the new regional structures should not jeopardise "the effectiveness of existing delivery arrangements".

A British MEP, Ms Arlene McCarthy, warned that while "the catalyst of EU funding" had been used to start the debate on regionalisation, "it should not end there".

Councillor Constance Hannify, a member of the EU Committee of the Regions, said that having listened to the Minister, she was reserving judgement on the role of the regional assemblies. Questions remained, she said, about their control of funding and the "line of responsibility" between them and the existing eight Regional Authorities.

Mr Eddie Sheedy, the interim director of the Border, Midlands and Western Regional Assembly, urged the Government to devolve power to the assemblies, while Ms Marian Harkin, chairwoman of the Council for the West, criticised the Government for its failure to devolve power to date.