Mr. Pat Colgan:

Some of the issues overlap but I will take them as they came. I might ask my colleague, Mr. Henry, to address the education question because he has been doing some thinking on that with Government Departments. That was the point raised by Deputy Brendan Smith.

We share with the committee an appreciation of the importance of additionality. This money should be giving us extra options for doing new and interesting things that would not otherwise have happened. As regards the discussions we are having with Departments, the intention is that it should be fully additional. It is a bit different from the way it used to be in previous programme periods. The European Regional Development Fund, or ERDF, money is genuinely seen as additional now and not substituting for government budgets. As the body implementing policy, the SEUPB takes its direction from the policy Departments. However, we take on board the importance of additionality as well.

The local authority model was raised. We agree that that model of clustering and co-operation has worked extremely well. In Northern Ireland in particular, the 26 local authorities have clustered themselves into seven different clusters plus Belfast City Council. It has been an efficient way of getting money into local communities. It has also encouraged co-operation across municipal council boundaries, where the partner principle has worked extremely well. We see that continuing in the context of the review of public administration reforms that will take place in Northern Ireland. We imagine that new clusters will be shaped in and around the RPA boundaries as they emerge. Those are the discussions we are having with local authorities at the moment.

On the southern side of the Border, the six local authorities have an impetus for the new vision for local authorities' roles arising from recent reviews. We will continue to work with them on that and we see an important role for them.

We welcome the committee's comments on projects such as Castle Saunderson. Unfortunately, we expect that this programme will be smaller than the current one, which is valued at approximately €333 million. The next programme will have a value of €200 million from the ERDF, with a potential 15% additional matching funding which would bring it up to €230 million. We are therefore talking about a project that is 70% of the current programme's size. Our flexibility for doing large projects such as those will be less than it is in the current programme. It will therefore be incumbent upon us to identify specific iconic and important projects that would be worth funding. We look forward to doing so.

A number of committee members - including Deputies Feighan and Smith and Mr. Conor Murphy MP - mentioned the intervention rate. Matching funding is currently provided by Government Departments, so we are in effect funding projects up to 100%. If the 15% rate is taken - and the member states will have some discretion; they may decide to have a different intervention rate for the programme - it could continue to come from Departments and therefore we would continue to have a 100%-funded programme, or there is the option that projects might bring that matching funding to the table themselves. The matching funding could be in kind, which would include overhead contributions and staff costs. That would make it a bit more flexible in terms of particular types of project. It gives us more flexibility in the new programme. We are in discussions with the member states about how that might be applied. No decisions have been made on it yet. This is all part of the recommendations and proposals that will be coming from us to the Northern Ireland Executive and to Irish Departments. It will depend on that.

I will now ask Mr. Henry to say something about the educational points that were raised by Deputy Brendan Smith.