141 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Public Enterprise the projections for access to energy at source to the western region, further to the gas find in north County Mayo. [30863/01]

Bord Gáis Éireann and the Corrib Partners, Enterprise Energy Ireland, Statoil and Marathon, have completed an agreement under which BGE will build a pipeline to bring Corrib gas from Mayo to connect into the proposed ring-main at Galway.

Recently BGE submitted an application to my Department for consent to construct this pipeline. The scheduled completion date for the pipeline is August 2003. The Corrib partners expect to be flowing gas commercially in late 2003. BGE has signalled that Castlebar, Claremorris, Tuam and Athenry are likely to be connected in the first instance.

Earlier this year the Government decided, in principle, that the gas network should be extended to the north-west. An evaluation carried out by Bord Gáis has determined that this would require grant aid, as the demand for gas in the long-term would not be sufficient to pay for the capital cost of extending the system. Such grant aid would require State aid clearance from the EU Commission.