The Minister of State, Mr Eamon O Cuiv, is to urge the Government to give greater powers and more funding to the Western Development Commission to enable it to tackle the widening prosperity gap between east and west.
After being transferred to the Department of Agriculture, Mr O Cuiv initially refused to take responsibility for the commission, saying people in the west did not want "token agencies".
Following a meeting with the board of the commission this week, and a previous meeting with its chief executive, Mr Liam Scollan, and chairman, Mr Sean Tighe, Mr O Cuiv said there had been "a huge meeting of minds".
He told The Irish Times his earlier criticisms were not of the commission, or of the people within it, but of the structures. "With its funding and role, it is too small . . . to make the kind of impact we need to make," Mr O Cuiv said. "But that is not to blame them."
He said there would now be a "refocusing" because, in the past, the commission felt it needed to work at persuading ministers of its arguments. "They don't have to persuade any more, because I live in the west and I know the problems," he said. The next step would be to compile "hard facts" and then work to make things happen.
Mr O Cuiv accepted that new information to be released by the commission this summer would show that the economic gap between east and west was widening.
He said he would start working as fast as possible to reverse this and he was confident he could do so because of "magnificent support" from the Taoiseach.
He said there was no question about Mr Ahern's support despite the widening gap. "That's why he put me in there," Mr O Cuiv said.
He would be looking at State agencies to see if they were doing what they should be doing. From his former position in the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands he had seen the benefit of a multifunctional agency like Udaras na Gaeltachta.
If that type of agency worked well in the Gaeltacht, he said, there was an argument for looking at the Western Development Commission and making it a more powerful body with a more central role. He felt there was a need to go either "one way or the other".
"I would be very much for giving it a central role in the development of the west," Mr O Cuiv said.
The Western Development Commission was set up in 1997 by the Fine Gael-led government but was put on a statutory basis by the present Government in 1999.
Charged with spearheading economic and social development in the seven western counties from Clare to Donegal, it aims to influence government policy and has brought out a number of very detailed plans outlining the funding needed and how it should be spent. It also manages the Western Investment Fund.
In the past the commission has complained about a lack of adequate funding, but Mr Scollan, its chief executive, yesterday expressed satisfaction at Mr O Cuiv's stance. He said the key issue was western development and "not who said what, or at what time".
Mr O Cuiv's concerns about a lack of resources were shared by the commission, Mr Scollan said, but the pace at which the Government had responded so far to commission proposals for investment was not sufficient.
With the support of Mr O Cuiv, the commission would renew its efforts to achieve real commitment on a wide range of long-standing priorities. New proposals would name what needed to be done in areas such as roads, telecommunications, rail, air access and power, he said.