Hands up who’s surprised by the news today that Wales has lost out on yet another economic advantage to Northern Ireland and Cornwall because of the Welsh European Funding Offices, certainly not this blogger.
Apparently WEFO failed to include superfast broadband in its bid for Convergence Funds for Wales which could help rural communities across Wales, unlike the Northern Ireland Executive and the Cornish County Council who are now well ahead of Wales in terms of rolling out broadband for rural communities.
According to the Western Mail ‘Northern Ireland Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said rolling out super-fast broadband was bringing huge benefits and enabling rural residents to participate in the economy on equal terms with city dwellers.
Asked how Northern Ireland had managed to access European funding more quickly than Wales, Mrs Foster’s officials said they had decided what they wanted to do and presented a strong case to the European Commission, which approved their plans. BT has invested £30m, matched by £18m from Europe.'
And according to Russell Lawson of the Federation of Small Business Wales ‘“Homeworking and teleconferencing are very important examples of how super-fast broadband can be applied. One of the biggest problems we have in Wales is the low number of companies involved in exports. Having super-fast broadband provides the opportunity to develop new export markets.”
He said he is not surprised that WEFO had omitted to include broadband infrastructure in the initial application for Convergence funding.
“WEFO was constantly saying that EC money couldn’t be used for infrastructure, an argument that never stacked up. I’ve seen buses in Dublin saying ‘part funded by the EU’ on the side. It seems WEFO has this mindset about not being able to do things because of EU rules,” he added.'
Of course WAG will try ignoring this, pointing to Ieuan’s Broadband proposals in the Economic Renewal Programme and staying quiet while WEFO take the heat, but where was the scrutiny by Ministers of the Convergence Bid that went to the European authorities I wonder?
The full article is HEREAny source
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