The Taoiseach denied that the Government had delayed making a decision on its regionalisation proposals until after the Cork South Central by-election.

Mr Ahern was replying to the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, who said that the Government was claiming it had a proposal last July to consider the inclusion of Kerry and Clare. Why, he said, had it not submitted the proposal prior to the August recess? He asked if there was any truth in the allegations in the media that the Government decided to defer making the submission to Eurostat until after the Cork South Central by-election, wasting scarce and valuable time.

Declaring there was no truth whatsoever in the allegation, the Taoiseach said the Cabinet had spent a long time dwelling on the best way to approach the issue. Pressed by Mr Quinn to say if proposals were drawn up in July, the Taoiseach said there had been a presentation in the Department of Finance in June or July which indicated that Kerry and Clare should be included. But there had not been a final Cabinet decision until recently.

The DL leader, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, said the Taoiseach should accept that the Government had made a total mess of the regionalisation issue. Whatever the benchmark used by the EU in regard to measuring prosperity, at the very least the Government would be expected to base its plan for the State on what it knew to be the facts.

The facts were that the GDP did not reflect on a county-by-county basis, or even on a national basis, the real picture regarding the prosperity of the country. On the one hand, there were multinational profits being counted as part of GDP, although they were largely taken out of the country, while at the same time there was EU funding going to the farming community, by the way of headage payments, which remained in Ireland and was not counted.

"So there is really no reality to the figures on which the Government is basing its national plan."

Mr Ahern said the reality was that in Objective 1 status in all regions in all countries, the basis was the GDP per region. But there were, of course, problems with that. Because teachers were paid from Athlone, Westmeath was wealthier than Paris. "This is very interesting, but that is the way the figures are when they are taken on a county basis. That is why they are taken on a regional basis. And, of course, we see that Kerry is well within the guidelines. It is dramatically low, even though everyone here last week swore on their lives that Kerry was way over."

The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, asked how the Government could justify departing from regional boundaries for two counties, and not others, if the matter was to be taken on a regional basis.

Mr Ahern said it was done by the people preparing the plan on the basis that the western seaboard was an area of peripherality. When they saw what happened in west Wales and the valleys, and when Lisbon was taken out of the Portuguese region, they believed that it was a good case to make.

"Is the Taoiseach seriously suggesting that Mizen Head is not on the western seaboard? How, on that basis, can you justify excluding west Cork?" asked Mr Bruton.

Mr Ahern replied: "Very simple. When we asked about taking in isolated parts of counties, like some of the poorest places in Ireland which I am honoured to represent, the answer we were told was No. No other country has been allowed to do that."

Mr John Browne (FG, Carlow-Kilkenny) said that the figures released on Tuesday had proved there were four counties much worse off than Kerry and Clare. Based on those figures, the people of Carlow and Kilkenny felt they were entitled to be included.

Earlier, Mr Bruton asked if the Taoiseach had available to him authoritative county GDP-per head statistics which took into account, by virtue of the Revenue Commissioners' access to such information, the income per resident. Mr Ahern said he did not have such figures.

Mr Bruton said that any statistics from any Government organ should be available to the Taoiseach.