Mr. John McCandless:

I am the communications manager for the SEUPB. The Castle Saunderson project is an excellent project. We were involved in its launch with President Michael D. Higgins a couple of years ago and we got very good coverage for that. It is sometimes difficult to communicate the work that we do. We work with the projects themselves to help them develop what they are doing in terms of communications and marketing and they all have a separate budget for that. We do the marketing and communications and the projects do that as well.

We recently carried out a stakeholder's survey to look in to awareness of the programmes within Northern Ireland, the Border region of Ireland and in western Scotland. Awareness is higher in the Border region than it is in Northern Ireland. It is projects such as Castle Saunderson, the effects of which permeate through the local communities, which help generate awareness of what the EU funding is doing. We can always do more; that is a given. Perhaps the Senators here today would like to come and see some of the projects and help us to communicate the benefits of the work that is being done through PEACE and INTERREG.