Ms Sheenagh Rooney:

We have been active in holding information sessions throughout the country that are well attended and that people seem to welcome. We held them in advance of the calls to design applications, during the calls to give information and after the calls to give feedback to people who had applied. The cost of engaging with the rural regeneration and development fund and has not arisen at any of the feedback sessions that we have arranged or in our bilateral contacts. In general, people seem to welcome this significant funding, which they see as filling a gap that was not there previously. Obviously, town and village funding was only able to do so much, although it is valuable. We have received feedback about: making the forms simpler, which we have tried to do; having more information sessions, which we have done; giving feedback on applications to help people; and ensuring that all of the information is accessible. We are open to making whatever other improvements can be achieved in that regard.

The cost of participating has not arisen as an issue. Often, people seem to have had good ideas for regeneration for which they were just waiting for a funding stream to arrive. In many cases, they had been working on their plans for some time. We are due to go out again in January to give feedback on the recent category 2 call. We will raise this matter in one of the open workshops and see whether we can garner any information on it, but it is not an issue that has come to our attention to date.