COMMENTING on a report to be aired on BBC Wales' Dragon's Eye programme tonight that the National Botanic Garden has called on the Assembly Government to write-off its £1.7mn debt and provide an annual grant of £500,000, Shadow Heritage Minister and Preseli Pembrokeshire AM Paul Davies said:

"I am extremely concerned at this news.

"I find it utterly incomprehensible that the National Botanic Garden is asking for another public handout just four years after taxpayers bailed it out for the first time.

"This has put the Assembly Government in an invidious position.

"Ministers have set a precedent by writing off the Wales Millennium Centre's debt.

"If they are to remain consistent I cannot see how they can possibly reject this appeal from the Botanic Garden.

"The garden is an important cultural and scientific asset of which we are all rightly proud and must support.

"However, with public spending under pressure from competing demands we cannot continue to bail out projects such as this every few years.

"Ministers now need to work with Botanic Garden management to ensure it has a viable future and that they are not forced to come back to the Assembly cap in hand for even more public money.

"If the Assembly Government does agree to their demands this time we also need cast iron assurances that no other project or organisation will lose out."