County Donegal’s future in the European Union could mean increasingly looking East as well as South in an attempt to achieve balanced regional development.

This was stated by Independent MEP Marian Harkin when she addressed the Neil T. Blaney Winter School on the subject of the future for Ireland in the European Union.

Donegal was different, as its tourism promotion stated, and it was also distinct culturally and geographically, she said.  The County had a great deal in common with it’s traditional hinterland of Derry and Tyrone and imaginative use of cross border mechanisms could achieve for Donegal what the State had failed to do in the past 85 years, the Independent MEP said.  “Donegal has consistently been badly served by the Irish Government and one of the most disgraceful indications of this is the fact that Donegal is the county most at risk of poverty in the Republic”, she said.

In joining the European Union, Ireland had at last broken it’s economic dependence on Great Britain and was, as a consequence, able to talk on equal terms with the ancient antagonist, she said.  “Today the North is a whole new scene which should benefit counties like Donegal which shares a history of neglect with Derry and Tyrone, she said.

It was time that the Irish and British governments acknowledged the neglect by developing common infrastructural and economic programmes specifically geared to boosting the north western counties and giving them an opportunity to share equitably in the allocation of government funds, she said.

Although she was not personally acquainted with Neil T. Blaney, she thought he would have a quiet smile at the idea of closer integration of the economies of Donegal, Derry and Tyrone as a step towards an ambition he had held throughout his political career, Independent MEP Marian Harkin said.