Sir, - Like a lot of other people, I have doubts about the Celtic Tiger's influence, if any, on Ireland's offshore islands. Further, it seems to me that in the EU context the islanders have been hard done by.
Certainly the Irish Government recognises, and admits, that the remaining offshore island communities have real and special difficulties. Studies have been carried out and published, debates have been staged, and we have a Minister with special responsibility for the islands. From time to time minimal measures are announced aimed at ameliorating the islands' problems.
However, as far as Brussels is concerned, our islands do not exist as entities - disadvantaged entities. They are lumped in with the rest of the country. As a consequence, the serious and tragic decline that began in the 1930s continues.
In the context of EU funding, our island communities are not receiving their fair share. Here is why: some regions fall well below the EU threshold of 75 per cent per capita GDP of the EU average, and have been singled out as "non-convergent". However, this country as a whole is assessed as reading 92 per cent, leaving us above that 75 per cent threshold for qualification for Objective 1 status.
But the perceived national average, in the context of the islands, is a figure which penalises the island communities. The wealth of Dublin puts the capital at 111 per cent. The West is at 64 per cent, the midlands at 66 per cent, the border counties at 71 per cent.
In other words, there has been a degree of penalising piggy-backing on the extreme poverty of the islands to win maximum funding for the country as a whole since we joined the EC. They should now get off the back of the region that was correctly labelled by the international islands' Commission Conference at Tenerife in 1983 as "the region that experiences poverty in its most extreme form".
It is imperative that our offshore islands retain their Objective 1 status so that they are enabled to administer their own affairs. - Yours, etc., Diarmuid O Peicin, C.I.,
Iontaobhas na nOilean, Milltown Park, Dublin 6