AQW 5765/16-21

Mr Stewart Dickson
Alliance Party
East Antrim

Tabled Date: 19/10/2016
Answered On Date: 03/11/2016
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Infrastructure to detail the information his Department has received from the European Union regarding future funding for (i) ongoing Transport NI projects; and (ii) future Transport NI projects.

Answer:

My Department has, for a prolonged period, worked closely with the Commission and its Agencies to both promote potential projects and ensure that our particular issues and circumstances are acknowledged and accounted for. This has resulted in our projects featuring prominently in Commission Regulations and workplans.

The latest call for applications for funding through the Connecting Europe Facility – which is a highly competitive programme – opened on the 13 October 2016 with the deadline for the submission of proposals being the 7th February 2017.

This is a particularly prescriptive call with the majority of funding being targeted at Cohesion countries. Taking the call criteria into account, it is clear that in this case, smaller scale projects will be most likely to attract funding. I have asked my officials to examine the suitability of a range of potential candidate projects with the intention of submitting applications where it is appropriate to do so.