Any changes to the existing eight regions of the Republic should involve real devolution of powers, the EU Commissioner, Ms Monika Wulf-Mathies, has said.
Commenting on the Government's request to Eurostat, the EU's statistical body, for Objective 1 funding status for a specially created region of 15 Border, western and midland counties, Ms Wulf-Mathies yesterday repeated her assertion that the decision was a matter for Eurostat alone.
She added that there "must be a real devolution of powers if we change the (existing defined) regions. Devolution is not something people usually do for technical and financial reasons that might define some subsidies of a certain amount and for a certain time." .
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Government has protested to Eurostat over what it says are overestimates of income in some areas for which Objective 1 status is being sought. Eurostat has promised to look again at figures it issued yesterday and to respond to queries from Dublin by early next week.
The figures from Eurostat show that the 13 western counties originally suggested to retain Objective 1 status have an average per-capita income of 72.3 per cent of EU GDP, some 2.7 per cent less than the EU ceiling for Objective 1 of 75 per cent. Although the Government is refusing to publish wealth statistics for individual counties, it is understood that the addition of Clare and Kerry to the list is not expected by the Central Statistics Office to add more than 1 per cent to the average. Any revision of the figures by Eurostat is expected to be marginal and to have no significant impact on Ireland's case for regionalisation.
The differences between the Government and Eurostat are understood to reflect a disagreement about how to convert raw Irish figures on GDP into the EU's final form, which reflects the different relative purchasing powers in member-states because of variations in prices.