International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

60.0 Grant Funding
60.1 Introduction
The public sector is the main source of the grant funding, offering financial assistance
to organisations across the public and private sectors. The public sector sources the
funds both from general taxation, and from specific ring-fenced pots of money,
derived from particular taxes associated with potential environmentally detrimental
activities, e.g. landfilling. The funds are then used to finance projects which offset
these detrimental activities, or support environmental policy goals.
The OECD suggests:
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‘The golden rule of public funding suggests that governments should support
only those investments that are economically efficient but not financially
viable’. 1111
By following the OECD’s advice, grants should fund projects which can prove that their
reliance upon the funding is not long-term, and that they have the capacity to function
sustainably, i.e. without the grant support, in the future. This generally makes it
important to ensure that the applications for funding demonstrate an ability to stand
on their own feet once grant support falls away. In some cases, revenues may be
used to support specific activities on an ongoing basis, but in these cases, it is not
clear what purpose the ear-marking purpose serves. If there are areas of activity
which require ongoing support, presumably in the public sector, then it becomes
unclear why the activity should not be supported through general taxation rather than
ear-marking per se, though clearly, it can be argued that the two are equivalent.
Having looked at the Irish case (Section 60.2), this report seeks to identify current
international examples of grant funding (Section 60.4 to Section 60.12). Following
this, the Irish case will be examined and recommendations will be made.
60.2 Grant Funding in Ireland
60.2.1 National Development Plan
In Ireland the co-ordinating structure for the planning of government over a
programme period is the National Development Plan (NDP). Historically, over past
programme periods for the NDP, a significant feature of the NDP was the co-funding
of some programmes and measures with income from the Irish exchequer along with
EU funding. This has significantly reduced in the latest NDP period (2007-2013), in
which an expected €3 billion from the EU Structural Funds was planned for within the
€184 million expenditure planned for priority investment in the period.
1111 OECD (2007) Handbook for Appraisal of Environmental Projects Financed from Public Funds,
report to OECD by the Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Programme,
Available: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/63/38786197.pdf